Any way to change color of "selected items" in Menus & Explor

[antiq]

Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit.

In XP, it was easy to change color of Selected Items (on menus and in Explorer windows.)

I find the Vista default pale-blue glassy selection marker to be very difficult to see on my laptop screen. There just isn't enough contrast for my antique eyes.

It seems to be hard-coded in the Vista msstyle, and is one of the Advanced Appearance settings that has no effect.

Is there a tweak that can do this, or does it have to be coded in a style?

[antiq]

Ok, apparantly not.

Is there then any way to change the window color of Windows Explorer?

Using Display Properties > Appearance > Advanced > window color ---- changing the window color here only seems to affect applications, such as notepad, Word, etc, etc. Explorer seems to be hard-coded to be a blindingly bright white, and I can't get it to change. The "selected" highlight is almost invisible.

I can't believe that I am the only user in the world who finds this color combination difficult to use. :x

I'm getting more desparate.

Is there a registry hack?

[Dead_Monkey]

I haven't used Vista in quite a while (XP at work, 7 at home), so bear with me here.

Can't you do something like, right click the desktop, get properties, Window Color and appearance, then there should be a link at the bottom of that dialog that lets you open the "classic properties" dialog, and then under advanced you should be able to change the color of the "Window" item to alter your white background problem and Selected Items for your other issue?

Or maybe just disable Aero and basic, go back to Windows Classic (my personal preference for everything between 2000 and 7, because all the themes have looked butt-ugly).

[antiq]

Thanks for responding, I was starting to feel like the Invisible Woman :-)

under advanced you should be able to change the color of the "Window" item to alter your white background problem and Selected Items for your other issue?

Nope.

it seems to be hard-coded for Explorer. I can change the colors, but they affect notepad, Word, etc, etc. Explorer refuses to change. I'm using FreeCommander as a file-manager, but sometimes I'm forced to Explorer, such as opening folders from my search utility FileSeeker.

Or maybe just disable Aero and basic, go back to Windows Classic (my personal preference for everything between 2000 and 7, because all the themes have looked butt-ugly).

Yup, I think you're right. I'm dusting off my old copy of 3dcc, and gonna get far away from all that "baby-blue" (what were they thinking!)

[Dead_Monkey]

Nope.

it seems to be hard-coded for Explorer. I can change the colors, but they affect notepad, Word, etc, etc. Explorer refuses to change. I'm using FreeCommander as a file-manager, but sometimes I'm forced to Explorer, such as opening folders from my search utility FileSeeker.

You may be able to change that within explorer itself then, hold down Alt in an explorer view to bring up the menubar if it's concealed, then select Tools:Options. In 7 you can set a background (colors or wallpapers) by folder view type (music, documents, video, etc), and you should probably be able to do the same thing in Vista. It may not be in that specific location though (again, no access directly to a Vista system, so I'm not certain).

[antiq]

I'll give that a try. But if it really is by folder "Type", then I am doomed.

I posted at another forum about Vista's insistance to classify almost every folder as a different type --- I was trying to set Details View as the default for all folders, like in XP, but almost every folder I opened would be back at default Icons (grrrrr) view. Then I would go to Tools > Folder Options > View > Apply to All Folders. Then Vista would ask for confirmation to apply settings to files of THIS TYPE. Even though all my folders have mixed content, vista keeps considering almost every folder as a different type. Highly frustrating.

[Dead_Monkey]

I'll give that a try. But if it really is by folder "Type", then I am doomed.

I posted at another forum about Vista's insistance to classify almost every folder as a different type --- I was trying to set Details View as the default for all folders, like in XP, but almost every folder I opened would be back at default Icons (grrrrr) view. Then I would go to Tools > Folder Options > View > Apply to All Folders. Then Vista would ask for confirmation to apply settings to files of THIS TYPE. Even though all my folders have mixed content, vista keeps considering almost every folder as a different type. Highly frustrating.

There is a registry hack to fix that. Vista's type detection is very much flawed. 7 is better (still not perfect).

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/70819-wi...w-settings.html

[JimB]

Let me clear this up antiq, is it this background selection color, the so-called "condom" selection in Vista that makes it impossible to "deselect" a number of items in one mouse keystroke selection ? See the tiny space in between the selected items.

[-KJ]

I hear SP2 fixes the alzheimer problems that plague Explorer in Vista. Took long enough for Microsoft to fix...

[JimB]

<br />I hear SP2 fixes the alzheimer problems that plague Explorer in Vista. Took long enough for Microsoft to fix...<br />

<br /><br /><br />

Are you serious ? OMG I have like some 10 explorer crashes a day in my Vista.