Modding XP

[jaba]

I dont have a clue about this, and I am a bit bored of how XP looks, so can anyone point me in the right direction?
Also, what have you lot done to your copies of it? anything fun?

 

[RandomBastard]

Lots of us use different styles and some have replaced there shell with things like likestep or mac type nav bars. Other than that and boot screens theres not much you can do to it.

www.deviantart.com i believe has some replacement styles. you will need to use something like tweakui to unlock the dll thing first.

www.litestep.com

 

[Shovel]

If you're feeling more involved: Samurize lets you put many many toys on your desktop.
Then there's Yz'Shadow and Yz'Toolbar that add shadow to windows and replace toolbar buttons. Yz'Dock was closed down, but there're various alternative Dock bars out there.

 

[tRoG]

There are many different ways to customize the looks of Windows XP. For a start, try right clicking anywhere on your desktop, choosing 'Properties', and selecting the 'Appearance' tab. There are a great deal of options to fiddle with there.

You can fiddle around with different icon sets (Which you will be able to find at most of the sites listed below) using an icon manager, like Iconphile.

To do anything more advanced, you will usually need the help of a third party skinning tool, such as Style XP. You can then go to any of the number of customization sites online, and pick a visual style that you think looks good.

Here are a couple of sites to get you going:

• ThemeXP
• StudioTwentyEight
• Customize.org
• deviantART

You may have also seen other things on people's desktop, such as TV listings, or stats on how their computer is running. You'll need another app for this sort of thing - Samurize is a very commonly used, and highly recommended one. Although a little daunting at first, it's pretty easy to get to grips with, to create some impressive results.

If you want to get really advanced, you can install an alternate shell, such as Litestep. You can learn all about Litestep, and alternate shells in general, here. If you decide you want to take the plunge, there is an installer which makes things a lot easier located here.

*I swear, Jonty hasn't hijacked my mind!

Oh, and click here for my current desktop. I'm using a very simple Litestep theme.

 

[babs]

Stardock's suite of apps should do the trick.

 

[Krazeh]

Google for "uxtheme patcher", it will allow you to use unsigned windows themes

 

[jaba]

Thanks a lot for the help guys, i think im gonna give it a whole new look, and most likely break it in the process! is there any "get out of shit free" button that will reset it all if I mess it up?

 

[Jonty]

Hi jaba

To be honest, there's little that can go seriously wrong by using the utilities mentioned here. Samurize, StarDock etc. are all just regular applications which can be uninstalled. As for StyleXP or the UXTheme patcher, both backup the original Windows file they modify so that when you uninstall (or in the catch of the UXTheme patcher, choose to 'unpatch') you're left with exactly what you had before.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Nice post tRog, repuation bumped