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Tony Schreiner's WebLog

Developer - IE | Vista. Fighting complexity for 9 years and counting.

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Getting the flat menus back in Windows XP

I'm not sure if anybody else has this problem, but after I have used XP for a while the menus seem to revert to an ugly 3D look instead of having the clean, flat border. No amount of tweaking seems to get back the flat menus except going back to the original XP theme and re-customizing everything.

After turning up empty handed on Google and elsewhere I diff'd the registry against a machine I hadn't contaminated yet. Here's the registry key that seems to cause it:

3D menu look

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"UserPreferencesMask"=hex:90,32,05,80

Flat menu look

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"UserPreferencesMask"=hex:90,32,07,80

You'll need to log out and log back in again to make it take effect. As always, edit the registry at your own risk.

Published Monday, May 10, 2004 4:39 PM by tonyschr

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Comments

# re: Getting the flat menus back in Windows XP @ Monday, May 10, 2004 5:15 PM

Thanks Tony; this had been driving me crazy for weeks.

Roger Heim

# XP Menus and a useful link @ Saturday, October 16, 2004 2:33 AM

XP Menus and a useful link

An attempt at structured thought.

# nothing to see here » Wine colors @ Sunday, August 03, 2008 4:57 PM

PingBack from http://www.endolith.com/wordpress/2008/08/03/wine-colors/

nothing to see here » Wine colors

# Tony Schreiner s WebLog Getting the flat menus back in Windows XP | debt consolidator @ Friday, June 19, 2009 10:16 AM

PingBack from http://mydebtconsolidator.info/story.php?id=22852

Tony Schreiner s WebLog Getting the flat menus back in Windows XP | debt consolidator

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