XP icon alpha transparancy

[Tithis]

I feel like an idiot for having to ask this. I've never had this problem before.

I just reinstalled XP because of a few problems that were bugging me. I've noticed though that all of the icons are being displayed like on windows 2000, no alpha transparency. It really looks ugly as sin.

I've tried rebuilding the icon cache, I've set visuals to full, neither has helped.

Does anyone have any ideas?
(edit: I put this in the wrong area, sorry)

[glc]

Moved.

[cmillar6]

I am not quite sure what you are talking about but try playing around with the options in here; right click my computer-->properties-->advanced-->performance-->settings-->visual effects

[liambl]

Is what you are talking about when the desktop background doesn't go snug up around the icon text, rather make an ugly blue box around it? If so cmillar6 has the right location for the fix, it's the "Show drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop."

[Tithis]

No the text is fine. Everything on google I found was about that. I've also gone to the visual effects and put everything one. Thats what I meant by 'set visuals to full'

This picture shows exactly what I mean

I only have the standard transparency. Not the smooth one.

edit: Never mind, fixed the problem. The colors were set to 16bit instead of 32bit for some reason. I got the idea to check from that picture. Sorry about troubling you