What did you use to apply the Leopard skin?

I was thinking the same thing...some kind of transformation pack, flyakite...etc, I'd never put those things on my system.

I would back up as many applications/files as possible, it may very well wipe everything so you'll be starting over again.

I wonder if IconPackager would fix it? I would try the trial version and see if you can change them.

No....you're going to have to reinstall them all. Save all the installers (exe's), gather your discs, you'll have to install them that way. Simply backing up the program file folders won't work.

I'm not too familiar with it, I've always done home built. But...if you make a recovery disc through the built-in recovery thing it *might* backup everything on the harddrive (a ghost image), but just in case...backup all your stuff manually. You'll thank yourself later if the recovery disc doesn't save it all.

They usually have a recovery partition...my HP laptop does, but I made a recovery disc as well.

This is another reason why people use WindowBlinds. It's SAFE. 

Whenever someone offers you a way to "skin" Windows with claims of it being "native" or involves patching (in memory or on disk) this is the sort of stuff that happens.

A System Restore and a System Recovery are two separate actions. A recovery reformats and re-installs all originally installed programs. (And can be done on an HP from the boot menu without a disc. "F11" - if you haven't deleted the partition) and you must re-load your backed up data. A restore rolls back your system to a prior point in time. You will only lose anything saved after that restore point.Check your help and support section for more details. (Not that I'm advocating reading the instructions)     I have Vista and it's saved my ass twice, without dumping everything and starting over. I should add that Windows will use 15% of your HDD to save restore points after which it will overwrite the oldest one,so restore won't help you if your last known "good" one has been overwritten. Note: That adds up to 30Gb on a 200Gb HDD .Disk clean-up will let you delete all but the most recent restore point to regain the storage space IF you don't need them any longer. I have seen two HP laptops that had restore de-activated, probably to conserve drive space but I'll be leaving mine on for "stupid" insurance.    Good Luck!

So does a system restore make a ghost image of all your data?

Tell you what; back up all your important files, music, pictures, doc, excel files and any thing elso you want to keep. Once that is done forget about doing an image (if you haven't already made a backup image doing one now what be usless) because you would only be making an image of the problem.

Then restore you computer back to the original store bought system. In other words start all over again.

Again Good Luck