Theme not Changing?

Do you get the "Please Wait" (screenshot)
Jerry

Is that service running?

chev65 said:

Maybe I'm missing something here but I made a custom theme and never had to jump through any of these hoops to run it.

I simply put the theme's into a folder in My Pictures then went to desktop>right clicked desktop then choose personalize>clicked desktop background lower left>choose browse then find and click on the file I set up in "My Pictures" with 400 theme pictures which I compiled from other theme's. Worked for me without any problems.

I think you are talking about wallpaper we are working on a custom theme where is changes the start menu, taskbar, explorer ect.
Jerry

@Sandalz
I encounteres a similar issue as yours but slightly different. In my case, the themes changed but retain the basic look and not the aero, however the inbuilt aero themes worked. What i did to solve that was I stopped the Unsignedtheme service via task manager and started it again. After a couple of switching between inbuilt aero themes and custom themes, the problem was solved. You can try this and see if it helps.
@chev
OP is talking about themes not applying and not wallpapers.

Do you have these two items (screenshot) in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes
Jerry

Is Desktop Window Manager running in services (screenshot)
after that do this

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search box, type: Aero and press Enter.
3. Click on Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects. It should be under Control Panel search result.
4. A new window named Troubleshoot Computer Problems – Aero should appear. Click Next.
5. The wizard will try to solve those issues preventing you from enabling the Aero Theme.

Jerry

So what he means that every theme comes with these two files- one .msstyle folder and one .theme file and you've to make sure that both files are there in c:\windows\resources\themes folder, double click the .theme file and it'll get applied.
@Bongo
why don't you have file extentions set to show?