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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
April 4, 2010
Q.
In Windows 7, I have my wallpaper, cursors,
icons, sounds etc. all set up the way I want
them, but installing or changing a theme
destroys all my settings. How can I prevent
this from happening?
A.
There are several ways to retain your setup.
The icons (mouse pointers) and cursors are
the easiest so I'll cover them first.
If you
right click on your desktop, then select
Personalize, you will see in the left pane
two entries, "Change desktop icons" and
"Change Mouse pointers". If you click on
these you will see these dialogs:
In both
of these, there is a setting that is checked
by default that allows them to be changed
with the themes, You can uncheck these, and
themes will no longer change the mouse
pointers or desktop icons automatically.
Unfortunately, the other settings are not so
easy to prevent from being changed.
By
default, when you click on Personalize, the
themes are displayed. However, if all you
want to do is change the wallpaper without
affecting anything else, you can. Click on
the Desktop Background icon in the lower
left of the window. (Desktop Background is
Windows 7 designation previous windows
wallpaper). Now click the Browse
button and you can select any picture on
your computer as your wallpaper.
Likewise,
you can click on the Sounds icon set the
sounds and for any action as you want. The
same holds true for your Window Color and
Screen Saver of choice. Other appearance
settings can be accessed by clicking on the
Windows Color icon, then clicking on
"Advanced appearance settings". The dialog
that opens is very similar to previous
versions of Windows.
Now,
after you have things all set up like you
want them, right click the desktop, select
Personalize and when the window opens, you
will see the first icon in the list named
"Unsaved theme". This theme contains all of
your preferred settings. Right click on it
and select Save theme. Give it a name like
My Default, and precede the name with a
hyphen (-) like -My Default.
Now, this
icon will always be shown first in the list
of themes. Anytime you install a new theme
or do anything else that may change your
setup, you can simply click on this "-My
Default" icon, and everything will be
returned to the way you want it. This allows
you to try out any of the other themes and
easily return to your original theme.
Should
you change your mind at a later date, you
can always create a new favorite theme. Note
that you can delete any theme by right
clicking on it and choosing Delete Theme so
long as the theme you want to delete is not
the currently active one. |
