I turned on my computer yesterday and noticed that the XP theme I had selected months ago had changed. Also, when I turned off the computer I heard the sign off music which I had disabled. There might also be other changes, which I haven't noticed yet

Has this ever happened to anyone?

I've done a fairly thorough virus and malware search, but didn't come up with anything.

Any ideas on what might have happened?

are you on automatic updates? If so this could have triggered the reset to default during a major update. I guess you updated to SP3 since SP2 will stop support in June.

Besides the automatic update reply above, have you installed any new programs? Sometimes a new program will change the registry and apply defaults.

Thanks for your replies.

No, I haven't installed MS updates or any new software.

However, I did do a registry scan with CC Cleaner.

Could that be the culprit?

I guess my big concern is that this is the result of a virus of some sort.

When you used CCLeaner did you just scan or did you let it cleanup also as it possibly could change the registry. You can try eset online virus scanner as one scanner is often not sufficient.

www.eset.com/online-scanner

Thanks for your replies.

No, I haven't installed MS updates or any new software.

However, I did do a registry scan with CC Cleaner.

Could that be the culprit?

I guess my big concern is that this is the result of a virus of some sort.

Have you saved the old registry settings? If so go back to that one and see if it shows your old settings. What registry cleaner are you using?

I doubt that CCleaner has anything to do with it. CCleaner is neither a antivirus program nor a registry tweaker.

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimisation tool. CCleaner removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing it to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more HDD space.

source: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secu.../CCleaner.shtml

However, there are some registry related features

Registry Cleaning:

CCleaner uses an advanced Registry Cleaner to check for problems and inconsistencies. It can check the following:

· File Extensions

· ActiveX Controls

· ClassIDs

· ProgIDs

· Uninstallers

· Shared DLLs

· Fonts

· Help File references

· Application Paths

· Icons

· Invalid Shortcuts and more...

CCleaner should not cause the theme mods applied by some tweaked Windows XP install CDs to be removed.

I agree with elcent that the most likely reason is an automatically applied Windows Update that replaced the modified theme component with an updated (original) version.

Check whether 'Automatic Updates' is enabled or not (Control Panel).

I don't know of any simple way to revert the effect (other than applying the theme patch to the updated system files which is not trivial)

welo