MSAWindows and Theme Resets

[KeithKosh]

Two seperate problems.

The first one is there's a new process I've never seen before that's running in my Task Manager. It's called 'msawindows.exe' and I've had some troubles with it using up HUGE amounts of memory. I can't think of any windows programs that it would be named for, and I couldn't find any information about it on the internet.

Secondly, this is a problem I've had before, but it's still around. in WinXP Professional, one User Account has a little trouble with Themes. Basically, every half an hour or so if logged onto the User Account, the CPU will 'click' (pc speaker?), a message will pop up on the screen saying "Please Wait" (and the screen fades to grey, just like when you set a theme in the Display Properties), and the display Theme will be reset to Windows Classic (i.e. the boxy grey buttons). Even if the theme is already windows Classic, it will still reset to it. This only happens on one User Account - there are 3 on my computer and the other 2 never reset themes so they are happily set to the Windows XP theme.

Thank you all in advance for your answers.

- Keith

[blizey]

I've experienced exactly what you've described when running a theme program. I believe it was because I am only running 128MB. The theme program runs at start up and uses resources to keep your computer skinned. It was more trouble than it was worth, so I'm sticking to the old silver xp until I get more RAM. I've seen arguments to both sides, that skinning only uses 2-3MB of ram and it should not slow down or affect your computer at all, but I disagree. Also, you need to be careful where you download themes from. Some of them slip in a good amount of Adware.

You should post your system specs and which theme program you are using and someone may be able to help you.