Assuming it is a per pixel framed skin, which it sure looks like,

In the left tree of Skinstudio, go to Controls/Menus/pull Down Background. In the right tree properties look for Flat menus-disables skining. Make sure that is disabled.

Then in classic colors section (Miscellaneous/colors) the color is set at Menus/Background menu.

 

thanks very much Night Train, that did the trick...fantastic

'm also having alot of trouble getting the TabPane background being anything other than white (ie the background panel in Display Properites), and the text color of 'File' in windows explorer is black, even though i've not got any black text set...are there some other settings i need to disable?

thank you

Check your TAB PAGE image. I am gussing that is white. color it.

a shot in the dark about the black text- go to .. Controls/Menus/bar background/bar items...in the right tree ENABLE MENUBAR BUTTONS- make sure that is enabled.

hmmm, well everything looks fine in the preview panel or when clicking the Test button, just not when i apply the skin...

the same problem as i originally posted has started again, even though the Flat menus is disabled...wow, do you skinners have any hair left?  mine's in chunks on the floor...i keep fiddling, thanks again for the suggestions, i had coloured the images...

cheers

i'm not sure if it's normal or not, but i found that SkinStudio was using the 'original' .bmp in the skin directory, not the ones that i had changed, even though it said it was using them in SS. i renamed the bmp files for the menu backgrounds in explorer and now it seems to be working, all expect the text on the tools bars, which stubbonly remains black, even though everything to do with text in the Toolbars Buttons section is set to white....

If you continue to have problems liquidguru you can zip over to the Skinartistry Workshop and upload the skin so I can take a peak at the file to see if anything is amiss. http://www.design.skinartistry.com/news.php

thanks again Night Train, i'll do that