Windows 7 display themes

Win7 X64 Home Premium - from time to time, I'll install/run an app that pops up the message "a running program is not compatible with the current display theme and it will be temporarily changed to the 'Basic' theme". This is probably not the exact wording, but it's close and you get the idea. Usually, this change to the Basic theme is indeed temporary, and when I exit the the program that flipped the theme to Basic, the theme flips back to 'Standard' (or whatever it's called). But this last time, when I quit the app that switched the theme, the theme stayed on Basic. So now the main taskbar is a solid color and not transparent, as are numerous other items that were previously somewhat transparent. I have messed around with trying to change things back to the 'transparent' mode, but I have made no progress. I tried applying the Aero theme, but that did nothing other than change my wallpaper. I can live with the Basic theme and solid taskbars, but I would really like to have my old transparent theme replaced. The 'transparent' theme was set by default when I first installed Win7; I never had to set it up or anything; Windows did it on its own, kind of the same way that it went to Basic and got stuck there. Any suggestions will be appreciated!
Thanks!!

 

You may want to look at windows color and appearance (multiple ways to get there).

Right click desktop, click personalize, click window clolor, then check the box "enable transparency". Save changes.

If you are unable to do the top, then try the following:

At an elevated command ptrompt, try typing in:

net stop uxsms
net start uxsms

 

Have you tried a System restore yet?

 

Sorry it took so long to get back to this. Well, a couple of days ago (the day after the theme problem first appeared), before I got around to reading any of these posts, I rebooted the PC, and it was still in 'basic' mode, which I thought was weird. So, I figured I'd jump online, come here to MG and check this thread to see if anything had been posted . . . well, miracle of miracles, when I launched Firefox, my theme jumped BACK to how it was originally with the transparent taskbar, transparent window title bars, etc. So, I'm thinking that FF somehow got halfway 'locked' on to the basic theme (Firefox was running minimized when the theme first flipped to basic), and re-launching it after a system reboot 'unlocked' it, or something. :confused Weird. Anyway - problem solved, but I'm going to keep the "netstop" and "netstart" commands filed away.

Thanks to all who posted! :-D