[wolverine07]

Okay, so I tried a few things and it looks like the reason the background on the homepage is darker than the actual image has to do with the BG4All2.5.cab. It applies an even amount of masking (or transparency as Daemonax noted) on all HTC sense pages. If I uninstall the .cab the background on the homepage returned to normal brightness/color saturation matching the original image. I also tried some of the the other cabs by Santod for background for all pages. Each one behaves slightly differently but the one that is closest to what I want is R6_Landscape 16 Links.cab, which has a bright home and email page background, but uses a mask/transparency on most other pages to make it easier to read the white text. Unfortunately none of the various .cabs I have tried seem to work as flawlessly as the original BG4All2.5.cab + 16 Ouick Links 1922_R2.cab so I have reinstalled these two once again. Anyone know how I can modify the BG4All2.5.cab or what reg edits will change the transparency settings of the HTC home page background?

Second thought. It would be awesome to remove the mask on the Windows Start menu. I tried what you suggested by I could not replace the original \Windows\StartMenu_Background_Screen_800x480.png file with Total Commander since it is marked as read only. Am I missing something?