I’ve tweaked my WinXP Home OS on the desktop computer to make it easier for my poor ol’ eyes to read, with larger icons, text, colors, etc.
My taskbar/system tray ended up a gray color with reasonably larger icons for running programs. OK, that was easy.
Just got a laptop with XP Pro. Using desktop Properties and Accesibility settings, got it pretty much the same as the Home version. Desktop icons are sufficiently large now and the text under them, ditto
However, one thing is weird. The taskbar is a dark blue, the Start box is green, and all the icons on the sys tray are very, very small. I’ve checked all Properties dialog boxes, and can’t find any way to change the color or enlarge these icons.
Is this just a pecularity of the Pro version? Is there any way to change these to larger icons and a different color" Be damned if I can find anything, and the Help files are silent on the subject.
The color issue sounds like the standard XP theme. Right-click on the desktop, select “Properties”, then look at the “Theme” dropdown list. It will probably say “Windows XP”. Try selecting something like “Windows Classic”, click OK, and see what that does.
Offhand, I’m not real sure about the icon size issue.
The size of icons in the system tray is related to the size of some other desktop property (but I forget which) - it’s possible for them to be so small that they stack up in two rows, but this causes problems of its own.
One thing to be aware of: when you change themes, then change back again, you’re changing back to the default settings for everything within that theme - any changes you’ve made to fonts/icon sizes/spacings/colours will be lost unless you saved your theme before the change.
BTW, if you want both machines to be the same, why not save the theme (as a .theme file) from the one that’s set up correctly and load it up on the one that you’re having trouble getting set right.