Workarounds for missing Advanced Appearance settings dialog box?

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I know that Windows 8 Home no longer has the Advanced Appearance settings dialog which was present in most all of the prior versions of Windows. Does anyone know how to at least change the window background color from bright white to perhaps a light silver? Is this customizable in other versions of Windows 8, like in the Enterprise Edition?

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It is no different in other versions of Win 8. I do not know of any method to change the window background color.

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If Stardock hasn’t cracked the case yet it’s probably a tough nut indeed, but that’s who I would keep an eye on. They left in several high contrast themes, I wonder why they wouldn’t put at least one lower contrast theme together?

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If Stardock hasn’t cracked the case yet it’s probably a tough nut indeed, but that’s who I would keep an eye on. They left in several high contrast themes, I wonder why they wouldn’t put at least one lower contrast theme together?

How about other third party themes? I know there’s lots of Windows 8 themes floating around but I don’t know if any can modify the white background.

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How about other third party themes? I know there’s lots of Windows 8 themes floating around but I don’t know if any can modify the white background.

dark8 seems like a possibility.

Bruce

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Depending upon just how interested you are in getting Win 8 to do what you want in this area, you might consider using InstallRite (http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-postdownload.php?p=78545&t=4&i=1) to see exactly what Registry changes the advanced appearance settings dialogue causes on Win 7 and then try manually making the same Registry modifications on Win 8 to see what happens.

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Depending upon just how interested you are in getting Win 8 to do what you want in this area, you might consider using InstallRite (http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-postdownload.php?p=78545&t=4&i=1) to see exactly what Registry changes the advanced appearance settings dialogue causes on Win 7 and then try manually making the same Registry modifications on Win 8 to see what happens.

I found this discussion about modifying the Registry and it isn’t too hopeful: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/a5699003-9233-4ddc-96fc-e3c1e4a2a81b/ Apparently a lot of the Windows 8 changes are hard-coded and modifying the registry often doesn’t make a difference, according to that poster.

I haven’t done all of the modifications myself, but I don’t have a Windows 7 registry handy to make these comparisons. It also sounds like a laboriously tedious and time-consuming project!

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Depending upon just how interested you are in getting Win 8 to do what you want in this area, you might consider using InstallRite (http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-postdownload.php?p=78545&t=4&i=1) to see exactly what Registry changes the advanced appearance settings dialogue causes on Win 7 and then try manually making the same Registry modifications on Win 8 to see what happens.

Unfortunately InstallRite 2.5c seems to only work on my XP machine and not on the Win7 64 system. Installs but will not launch, so far. If I get it going, I’ll modify this note.

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Yes, it might be possible to have modified one of the high contrast themes maybe. If you try them, let us know if there’s some happy middle ground, dark8 looks like its still pretty heavy on the reverse color theme of white or light grey text on black.

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I know that Windows 8 Home no longer has the Advanced Appearance settings dialog which was present in most all of the prior versions of Windows. Does anyone know how to at least change the window background color from bright white to perhaps a light silver? Is this customizable in other versions of Windows 8, like in the Enterprise Edition?

I also find the bright white background harsh. My workaround is a little tedious and counter intuitive but worked for me.
Right click on the desktop and select personalise. Then I selected High Contrast White. Then you have access under “Color” to all the color controls, that is the bit that can be tedious to get a combination that is acceptable. Lastly select Desktop background then the Picture Location, I found that selecting “DesktopBackground” it picked the one I had been using previously.

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