Removing theme titles from the Themes list box


Question

Installed "Themes XP" earlier. After the trial time expired, the program has been uninstalled. However, the theme titles remained in the display properties box. If you click on one of the themes, the display box turns black. Is there anyway to remove these titles from the properties box?

Solution

Additional Themes can be removed by selecting the Theme from the list and then clicking the Delete button in the right side. If that does not help, you may following the manual removal procedure below:

Browse to these folders and remove the additional .Theme file (which you want to remove from the Themes listbox)

C:\WINDOWS\Resources
C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents (and it's sub-folders)

A .theme file can specify a DisplayName value under the Themes section. If a DisplayName exists, it is used instead of the file name. To match the display name with the file, edit the .Theme file with notepad and read the DisplayName section.

Note: "C:\WINDOWS\resources\Themes" contains three standard themes, don't delete them

If the title is still not removed, you may need to verify and remove a registry key. It is also possible that the software has registered a theme folder in this registry path:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\InstalledThemes

Open Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and navigate to the above path. Export the key to a REG file

Browse to each folder defined under InstalledThemes and delete the corresponding .Theme file from that folder. Then, delete the InstalledThemes registry key as well.


See also: How to add a custom website under Themes list box in XP?