Win7 custom explorer/start orb issues

[Windows Central Question]

Dear forum,

I have since quite some time gotten to customizing my explorer shell, navigation buttons, start orb etc. on windows 7 (64bit). However, after having had a particular start orb for a while, I thought it'd be nice to change it. So, I made my own new custom orb (following this guide: How to Create Your Own Windows 7 Start Button Orb Bitmap Image - YouTube). However, as I tried to change it with door2windows' start orb changer v5, the orb did not appear. My start button still works but is simply invisible... I then tried using customizergod, which resulted in the startorb being extremely white (Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet). I did run both programs as admin as that could've been a problem.

Here's my custom start orb: Darksouls-orb.bmp - Google Drive

Another issue popped up. I read on a forum somewhere I should revert my explorer skin to the original, and by using the 'sfc /scannow' command in cmd would fix this. However, it changed my explorer skin to that of a win95, and everytime i go into the control panel to pick a theme & fix it, my explorer crashes...

Could anyone please help me get a fix for this?

Thanks in advance
Lexy