After a recent reboot, our 2012 R2 Remote Desktop server's system colors are all wrong. It almost looks like it is in High Contrast, though it reports that it is using Basic.
Here is a screen-shot of the awfulness.
This problem exists in both Remote Desktop and a locally logged on console. I can confirm that there are no new drivers, and that no MS updates have been installed since the prior reboot (when things were working fine).
There are many developers logging into this system… it is likely some setting was changed that did not take hold until reboot… but what/where?
Anyone with any ideas on how to fix this mess… it would be very appreciated.
UPDATE: We determined that themes other than Windows Basic are unaffected. We've copied over another basic.theme file, and that did not fix it. Now I'm thinking that there is some registry setting for the default theme colors that is hosed. I just don't know where.
UPDATE 2: We altered the basic.theme file, so that it points to aero.msstyles instead of aerolite.msstyles. That seemed to fix our problem… even if it does turn on more eye-candy that we want.
At this point, what we really need is a registry or file location that determines all the colors for the AeroLite style — that is the one that is somehow damaged.
Best Answer
I sure scratched my head on this issue. Here's the solution for anyone who runs into this again.
Navigate to C:\Windows\resources\themes\vscache
Take ownership of the vscache folder. Delete everything in that folder. Restart the server. At reboot, the files will be recreated by the system and you should be golden.