Office XP UI stuck in 256 colors...

So I get this new computer at work and something was really bugging me about it. I couldn't get the desktop icons to have transparent backgrounds behind the shortcut text. I spent like 2 hours trying to figure out what the hell was wrong (I never did figure it out). Needless to say, I must have changed some wierd graphical setting or something...honestly I don't really know what the hell happened..but somehow all of my Office XP Applications UI reverted back to 256 color mode and I can't figure out how to get it back to the regular 32-bit look. Here is a screenshot of my current Outlook...

http://img64.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zomgor0.png

Here is what I mean by the regular 32-bit look...

http://www.rsaweb.co.za/tutorials/files/outlook2003-tools.jpg

I've already restarted my computer and made sure it was in 32-bit colors. I've also changed my windows theme back to regular XP style instead of Windows Classic but that didn't work either.

This is really weird. Can anyone help? Thanks...

 

It seems that for some reason outlook may have crashed or something on you with all the changes and it went into defualt/safe mode.

And is that a duplicate outlook window with one right ifront of the other, cause there are application windows open on top

If you have access, try un-installing and re-installing outlook.
I know I recovered outlook in the past....I just don't remember how I did it, I think it was something in the control panel, I'll take a look and see if i can remember.

 

Actually, that was a good suggestion. See, I don't have admin rights even though I'm a freaking developer (they are very beurocratic here) so I'm not sure I can mess with the installation too much...but I was able to use the "Repair" installation functionality...unfortunately it didn't work though .

I'm sure if I have rights to do that, but it's still a good suggestion. If all else fails I'll give the IT dept a call and see if I can get a system restore done. I forgot how system restore affects my system though as I barely ever found the need to use it...care to enlighten me? I've changed some a lot of documents on my local drive that would be cumbersome to backup..but system restore only affects the system settings and nothing else right?

It just seems like there has got to be some setting or something somewhere that will undo this though! Like you said Neko...it seems like it's just stuck perpetually in safe mode for some reason. Argh! So frustrating...

 

Hello jdmturbomr2,

No.

Take a look at the file extensions that SR monitors http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sr/sr/monitored_file_extensions.asp

You mention documents, any with .txt and .doc extentions are not monitored - not backed up and restored, but PDF documents are.

Also any software installs and MS Updates since the last restore point would have to be redone.

Any files in My Documents are not monitored, regardless of file extension.

Regards - Charles

 

Yeah I'm just worried about the java and xml files that I modified for work, but apparently they'll be fine. The only thing that concerns me is that I received several software installations that I had to get approval for from IT and were cumbersome to obtain and I can't remember when this problem first started occurring. Obviously I'd rather not have to re-do those installations. It's not really that big of deal, it's just one of those problems that bugs the **** out of you, especially since you have to look at Outlook everyday, the rest of the Office programs I don't touch very much.