I was fooling around with the aero.msstyle, and I tried to replace the taskbar image with a custom one and I succeeded (yeah it looks terrible, lol) but I realize it only shows up if I replace IMAGE:743, which, according to a guide I'm looking at, is the resource for the taskbar in Aero. The one for Basic is 737 but nothing happens when I replace that one, which is bad because I just want a custom style without the schloopy window transitions and the little previews that Aero has. Am I missing a step?

I'm confused with what you mean. Are you saying that replacing the Basic taskbar image isn't working?

Ah...sorry, I guess I talked myself in circles or something. Yep, that's basically what I mean.

No problem. Any particular reason you want to use Basic? Seems Aero is working fine there.

Anyway, there are different taskbar images for different positions (Left, Right, Top, Bottom). Maybe you have accidentally replaced the Top one and use the taskbar at the bottom position?

I guess I want to use Basic because it takes up less resources than Aero, so I've read. Is that even true?

I got it working now. I don't know what I did wrong before but I probably did replace the wrong image. Thanks for the help.

Its ********.. Aero is better because then the GPU does all the window managing instead of the CPU.. Something like that.. Well, dont use anything else if you have Aero.