I just change the 'color scheme' to silver from the Appearance tab of
the 'display properties box.
It gets rid of that aweful blue and silver more closely matches
everything other colors. Even though I'm on an MCE box, I've also
switched the 'windows and buttons' dropdown to 'Windows XP style' which
gives the gradient coloring.
Of course, none of this introduces any quirky mouse charsa or anything,
just the coloring, exactly what I want. YMMV