two questions and you realize that this blind was made for XP and is almost 10 years old.

what operating system are you using?

What version of WB and SKS are you using?

Hopefully someone can provide you with some insight

Hope this helps without writing a book here. As far as the current format it's the same as it always was. (.wba) The only think that would ever change is if changes were made in SKS itself and then you saved it. The only thing that would change is what you changed. The file extension would still be .wba. If you have noticed every time a new OS came out so did a new version of WindowBlinds and SKS. I'm not the technical person to explain this but basically it's this. 

In order to skin the correct areas on the new OS SKS has to be upgraded to include these areas and WindowBlinds has to be changed to skin these areas which will make it work on the current OS. To make the xp skin work on 8.1 you would basically have to make it over again. You would have to add many new images. change text setting, etc everywhere in SKS and more. What you would be changing are many areas that were not needed in each prior version of Windows. There are also many areas in a xp skin that are not used in the current versions of SKS. 

So the bottom line is you can make it look better on the win 8.1 you are using but you would need to know exactly where to go to make the correct image, add the images and changes settings.

This is a basic explanation but hopes it helps you to understand the situation.

Open your WB in SKS. On the left side open "Backgrounds" Then Edit Explorer background bitmaps. You will see Explorer Backgrounds and Sorted Columns. You will also see Active Window and Inactive Window in both locations. Make a 20x20 pixel image the color you want and put it in both Active Window locations. Make another 20x20 image wither a little darker or lighter then the active image. Place this in both locations under the Inactive Window. 

Apply skin. If you have windows explorer open you may have to close it and open it again to see the change. 

Make sure you save these images as a .bmp

I tried Hardwood; in fact, I think it came with WB 8.13.  However, it has the same bright-white-Explorer issue that XP Wood had.  However, it may have a different root cause, since with Hardwood, Jarte also has the BW curse, which it didn't with XP Wood.

Also, I think XP Wood is *much* prettier than the other wood themes that I've looked at here, though BurlOak is pretty nice too

Yep, I'm going to do your suggestion tonite!!

Amazing!!!  I thank you so much for all this data, I'm looking forward to working on this tonite...

Wow... I'm, ummm... just Wow...

Thank you !!!  It is gorgeous, that was perfect!!  I've extracted both of your messages into a reference file, which I'll keep with my WB registration info...

Would it have even been *possible* for me to figure these things out myself??  I had three different SkinStudio tutorials opened, but they all had soooo much information, and none of it seemed to talk about the Explorer images...  I was very discouraged.

Now, I has a purr !! 

Thank you again, DaveBax