Serious Windows XP SP3 help wanted: how do I change appearance bac

i swear, this is a tough one. a while back when this was still my parents
computer (they got it back in '07 w/ Windows XP professional SP2 [now its XP
pro SP3]). well just last year (sometime back in early or mid 2009) their
appearance for Windows and buttons (under appearance tab in Display
properties) went to classic view and got stuck there. now it's our computer
and it's doing that automatically to all the user accounts when someone 1st
makes one. I hadn't tried a system restore b/c it only goes back to feb 2010
and we just got this computer up & running again (remember i said its been
stuck in classic view since early [or mid] 2009) also I don't wanna do much
until my mom is done w/ all her files & stuff moving them to their other
computer and backing them up. we also tried backing up all our files &
deleting the other user accounts (don't worry their in flash drives we can
put them back later when we recreate our user accounts) but anyway with that
I also switched to classic logon (because than when you logout it usually
should go back to Windows XP default look. it actually didn't. but not
Windows Classic either. its actually kinda like both so idk what else to do i
need someone very smart at this to help me fix the appearance prob plz. i
need advice. and i don't have the Windows XP professional disk and do not
feel like making another 1 because pirating is illegal and i don't go down
that road. sorry but I just don't like classic view and the fact that its
stuck is a problem. i wasn't sure but i did this because my parents said we
could now that its ours so i removed a program on here called "webshots"
because even though i kinda doubted it i thought that might be part of the
problem. i wonder now b/c it's still active on my computer but says it's
uninstalled already when i try to uninstall it. if you wanna help me fully
uninstall that also thats fine but i also already removed the "kiwee" stuff
that went with it. The only thing I can think of is pressing F8 at startup
and selecting "last known good configuration" but again i need to wait and
i'm not sure if that would work. plus if it does theres some programs i'm
pretty sure we might not have discs for.

Additional Details
list of programs that i'm worried about from above: bonjour, cleanup,
hijackthis, Intel RSX 3d, ipix active x viewer, all the microsoft .net stuff,
microsoft compression client pack for WIndows XP, microsoft usermode driver
framework feature pack 1.0 (which may go with the fear of losing my drivers
for scanner, printer, etc), all the microsoft visual C++ 2008 redistributable
software, realtek AC'97 audio software, shockwave software, via platform
device manager, via rhine- family software, and via s3g display driver (also
might go with the fear of losing my drivers for scanner, printer, etc)
also a heads up i'm not even sure what a lot of this is/does and etc

don't worry i have some pics in on flickr pics if any1 is confused:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/4629711790/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/4629684788/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/4629684782/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/4636837996/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/4636251853/
ya, i also commented on most (if not all) of the pics too

plz don't answer with its just looks, it don't matter, etc. & plz leave
serious answers only this is important to me