Here's our Windows NT Tip for.. September 27, 1997
Click Here to see a complete list of all of our previously released Tips!
Themes and Themes fixes
If you have both NT and Windows 95 with the Plus! Pack loaded on your PC, you can use your Win95 Desktop Themes under NT 4.0. Find THEMES.CPL and THEMES.EXE in Win95's \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and copy them to your \WINNT\SYSTEM32 directory. Reboot your system. A Desktop Themes icon will appear in Control Panel.

Note for users of Office97: The Microsoft Desktop Themes application that ships with Plus! for Windows 95 or the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit is incompatible with some JPEG filters installed by other applications including the filter installed by Microsoft Office 97.

You'll need to download the NT Themes patch (assuming you're running the I386 platform) via FTP at: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt40/themes/I386/ThemeFix.exe (153K)

And while you're at it, you may want to check out the README: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt40/themes/I386/README.txt (1K)

The patch replaces Themes.exe on your system, which will then read version 4.00. You can verify this by right-clicking on Themes.exe and go to the Version tab.

There are also NT Themes Patches available for Alpha, MIPS and PPC platforms as well: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt40/themes

If you happen to be running Windows 95 with the Plus Pack and you also installed Office 97, you may have already found out that Themes.exe no longer works here either. No problem, there's a fix available for Windows 95 users too at: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/Themes.exe (84K) This patch upgrades the Win95 Themes.exe to version 4.40.311.

Just remember, there are TWO DIFFERENT PATCHES, one for Windows NT and another for Windows 95. They are NOT interchangeable.