Solved Stuck on Classic theme after installing NVIDIA drivers

[spioner]

So yesterday I was all exited because my new GTX 660 came in. I built it in my computer right away, installed the drivers from the DVD and updated them. I am running 320.18 WHQL driver for 64 bit.

But now, my theme seems to be stuck on Classic. All the other themes in the control panel are greyed out. Another thing is that before logging in it shows a "Please wait..." screen for a while, and once logged in it tells me that it could not connect to the System Event Notification Service.
One more issue (should I be starting multiple threads for this?): my right-click context menu is very slow (takes at least 15 seconds to load). I'm not sure if this is important, but I read other people had the same issues after installing NVIDIA drivers.

Things I tried:
Now, what I read that the themes service might be disabled for some reason, so I opened up services.msc and looked it up. Both the Themes and the System Event Notification Service were on automatic, and restarting the Themes service gave me my trusty Aero theme back. Unfortunately, this sets itself back on rebooting. Also clicking the "Solve problems with Aero and transparancy" on the themes screen on configuration panel works, but no luck after rebooting.
I also tried downgrading to both 314.22 and 314.07 versions but that didn't resolve the issue.

Hope anyone can help me with this!
BTW: I'm new to forums in general, so don't sue me!

 

[TwoCables]

What was your previous video card?

What power supply do you have (brand and model)?

 

[Bongo]

Welcome to the Seven Forums

For the theme.
Did you refresh the WEI after installing the video card?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/263-windows-experience-index-update-refresh-score.html

Jerry

 

[spioner]

Welcome to the Seven Forums

For the theme.
Did you refresh the WEI after installing the video card?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/263-windows-experience-index-update-refresh-score.html

Jerry

Yes I did. Before it showed a greyed-out rating of 5,9 and after I refreshed it, it still indicated a 5,9, but no longer greyed-out.

 

[spioner]

What was your previous video card?

What power supply do you have (brand and model)?

My previous video card was a AMD Radeon HD 6850. I did unistall the drivers from that device, with the device manager, before installing the new ones.
Not sure about the power supply right now. All I know is that it supplies 550W. I guess I could open it up and check, but I'm a little tired right now so I'll do that tomorrow if I remember.

 

[TwoCables]

What was your previous video card?

What power supply do you have (brand and model)?

My previous video card was a AMD Radeon HD 6850. I did unistall the drivers from that device, with the device manager, before installing the new ones.
Not sure about the power supply right now. All I know is that it supplies 550W. I guess I could open it up and check, but I'm a little tired right now so I'll do that tomorrow if I remember.

Ok. Try to remember because it's pretty important. Sometimes very low-quality PSUs can cause very weird problems that no one can figure out or solve.

However, the GTX 660 (the non-Ti version) consumes less power than the 6850, so I guess it could be either a slightly defective card, or maybe you need to try different driver versions.

 

[spioner]

What was your previous video card?

What power supply do you have (brand and model)?

My previous video card was a AMD Radeon HD 6850. I did unistall the drivers from that device, with the device manager, before installing the new ones.
Not sure about the power supply right now. All I know is that it supplies 550W. I guess I could open it up and check, but I'm a little tired right now so I'll do that tomorrow if I remember.

Ok. Try to remember because it's pretty important. Sometimes very low-quality PSUs can cause very weird problems that no one can figure out or solve.

However, the GTX 660 (the non-Ti version) consumes less power than the 6850, so I guess it could be either a slightly defective card, or maybe you need to try different driver versions.

I checked inside my case and I have a Antec Neo HE 550 in my PC. I had it for a pretty long time but I think it is decent. Just to confirm my GTX 660 is non-Ti.

 

[TwoCables]

My previous video card was a AMD Radeon HD 6850. I did unistall the drivers from that device, with the device manager, before installing the new ones.
Not sure about the power supply right now. All I know is that it supplies 550W. I guess I could open it up and check, but I'm a little tired right now so I'll do that tomorrow if I remember.

Ok. Try to remember because it's pretty important. Sometimes very low-quality PSUs can cause very weird problems that no one can figure out or solve.

However, the GTX 660 (the non-Ti version) consumes less power than the 6850, so I guess it could be either a slightly defective card, or maybe you need to try different driver versions.

I checked inside my case and I have a Antec Neo HE 550 in my PC. I had it for a pretty long time but I think it is decent. Just to confirm my GTX 660 is non-Ti.

Yeah, that's not a bad PSU at all. It was pretty good back in 2008! So if it's not the PSU, then the only things I can think of are that it's either a slightly defective card, or you need to try different driver versions.

 

[Belgarionbg]

What was your previous video card?

My previous video card was a AMD Radeon HD 6850. I did unistall the drivers from that device, with the device manager, before installing the new ones.

Hi

I was in similar situation when I got rid of my ati 5570 replacing it with my new 660 OC. With not only uninstalling that damn catalyst cc but cleaning after that with another programs too.
Still all I got was bug after bug, not only the aero but the whole OS was acting weird.
So I just give it up and did clean reinstall. Since then everything work flawless

Otherwise this is my pc >

(that 5.9 is the last bottleneck - hdd, which I`ll be changing with ssd in near time)

 

[A Guy]

Welcome to Seven Forums spioner. For your right click issue, try using Using ShellExView to troubleshoot the cause. Use one of the other methods if needed.

Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers

A Guy

 

[spioner]

Welcome to Seven Forums spioner. For your right click issue, try using Using ShellExView to troubleshoot the cause. Use one of the other methods if needed.

Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers

A Guy

Allright thanks, I'll try that out.

 

[spioner]

My workaround

This morning I came up with something kinda useful. I made a little batch file that stops and starts the Themes service automaticly. Although not perfect, it does work a little easier than going into the services.msc and restarting the service manually.
If anyone needs it, just download my batch file and run it as admin. You will have to do this everytime on startup. You could make it run on startup automaticly, not sure how. It is far from perfect, but it is a solution. Feel free to ask me any questions about it.

Argh I might just do a fresh install some time soon... :drool:

Marked as solved.

 

[Tink1972]

Windows reverting back to basic theme/NVIDIA DRIVER FIX ONLY

This first one is a TEMPORARY and will have to be re-applied after shutting down your computer

1. Open task manager at the top of task manager click View and from the drop down menu select column and tick the box for PID
2. Look for a process called nvsvc there should be two of this processes running (if not this fix may not work for you)
3. Click on one of the processes right click and select from the drop down menu "go to services"
4. Again look for the file nvsvc and make note of what PID the task is running on
5. Go back to the processes screen and select the one that is NOT using the PID number from the services right click and select end process from the drop down menu, this should bring back the aero effects .
If for any reason you lose your aero effects using an nvidia shortcut just re-do the above steps


Here is a SEMI-PERMANENT fix if you prefer

1. Open task manager and click the tab that says Services at the bottom of the services tab click the Services button at the bottom of tab
2. Look for the service (it should be highlighted already if nit I will update this part)
3. If the service shows as running, select the service right click it and select stop from the drop down menu
4. Right click the service again and select properties look down for the words startup type and in the box next to it select disabled from the drop down box, click apply button and then the ok button

This fix should keep things normal until you use the Nvidia application to automatically instal the drivers. You can AVOID this by manually installing ONLY the drivers from the Nvidia package yourself and this fix will be permanent .


PERMANENT FIX **CAUTION**CAUTION**CAUTION** There is a possibility this fix may cause problems on certain setups or shortcut usage with your driver. I have NEVER had any problems with doing this myself but to be safe, make a SYSTEM RESTORE POINT before proceeding with this fix.

1. Open task manager and look for the file nvsvc right click and in the drop down menu select"open file location".
2. This should bring you to the highlighted nvsvc application.
3. Right click the file and select delete from the dropdown list.
4. Reboot your pc and you should no longer have any issue with losing your aero effects .