Please do let me know what you find. I'm not giving up on the issue, I'm just at a bit of a lose as to how to define it. Where is the Spring theme you're using from? Is it a 3rd party item? I never really got into the skinning craze back when so I'm not really "up" on what all of the MS themes are available.
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What I usually do in testing is drag either an explorer window or a command window down behind the taskbar for quick extra contrast when needed.

-Stoic Joker (May 27, 2011, 06:57 AM)

I'm afraid I added to the confusion a bit. I *am* using a skinning program "WindowBlinds7" from Stardock (love it), but when the problem persisted with it disabled/unloaded, I dismissed it as a factor.

With WB7 unloaded and is using the default "Aero" theme, I encountered the problem/solution you described earlier with "black/dark" text displaying as "transparent" and light/white text appearing opaque. The "White" box around the clock only shows when a skin is being used, drawing the clock on top of the skinned graphic.

There is no setting in WB7 to control "text" transparency, though you can change the transparency of the toolbar, windows and menus (I fiddled with them all). So I'm not sure how it is affecting text transparency, but am fairly certain now that it is. Not sure why a forced "repaint" also seems to fix the problem (temporarily, until the next reboot.)

I'll try a few more things and let you know what I find.

Changing "Desktop" color seems to disable text transparency (regardless of color selected).

See screenshot below from my "Personalization" settings dialog.

Themes that have "transparent" text lack a black bar in the "preview" icon. Themes with opaque text show a black bar on the "window" graphic. The icon/theme on the left would give me transparent text. The right one: opaque.

Okay, that makes a bit more sense. Now try setting the font color to the silver gray that's in the middle of the color menu. It should come out looking white when applied.

Also with that font, try setting Quality to ClearType(XP). I had to do that here at the office to get Calibri to look right.

-Stoic Joker (May 26, 2011, 12:29 PM)

Setting the text color to "gray" makes it even harder to see. Setting it to "silver" makes it invisible. Definitely the wrong direction. The text itself is "transparent" (tinted based on color).

Changing the color does not help. Changing the "Quality" (anti-aliasing), as I noted previously, likewise has no affect.