So I have a fresh install of XP, fully updated with SP2 and whatnot.

I've been unhappy with the lack of decent themes for XP and started looking for a way to get custom themes in it. In an effort to find the best one, I've decided to ask Massassi.

It seems most managers are resource hogs and come with a price, then theres the uxtheme.dll hack, which might cause system instability if done incorrectly(not that I'm all that worried about it, but meh). The ones I've looked at are all equally supported and seem decent enough, but I'm still unsure.

What do you guys use?

hack uxtheme.dll, there's a patcher to do it. As long as you get the right version it should be fine.

The .dll is the way to go.

Thanks, any theme suggestion to get me started?

http://b0se.deviantart.com/art/Codename-Opus-3-0-9240396
http://b0se.deviantart.com/art/Vector-Cell-8900915
http://b0se.deviantart.com/art/DMX-2-1-Final-2967850

http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/windows/visualstyle/

Yeah, this guy b0se on DeviantArt makes really good stuff.

b0se ==> opulence or vectorcell.

win.

window blinds is good, and you only have to bother with a splash screen every once in a while

Funny... I've never liked any of b0se's stuff. I generally go for really simple compact tiny dark themes, and the few times I've checked his, he generally only hits a few of those qualifiers.

Oh, and uxtheme.dll ftw.

I use this thing on my desktop back home.

http://customize.org/xpthemes/37572

Window Blinds is crap. I installed the demo, and after uninstall it forcibly asked me to buy every time I would change themes. Go with the uxtheme.dll hack, I did it and it worked fine for me. Use replacer.

Click here to download the uxtheme multi-patcher to allow 3rd party themes in any version of windows (except Vista i think, but then again vista is a totally different experience.)

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml

And go here for some really good themes.

http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.cat.3.html

That site also has so really good wallpapers, custom icons, docking stations, widgets, etc that will really change the look of your XP. They even have a cube desktop like linux (a little buggy but with some tweaking is nice if you liked it for linux.)


Windows blinds is CRAP. Resource hogger IMO.

stay away from stylexp, it's a resource whore.

Any 3rd party program that allows visual styles in a resource hogger. Patching the windows files is that best and safest option.

You don't need StyleXP anyways. The uxtheme.dll patcher does the same thing it does, except StyleXP works in-memory instead of on-disk and REQUIRES you use it's client (when you could just use Windows' built in one).

Windowblinds is good, and is the most flexible solution (it was made specifically FOR third-party skins, so has many many many options and a good skin format, whereas XP/Vista theming was only made to render Luna/Aero), but in the past I've found the 4.x branch to be slower than native Windows XP theming, so I tend to use that. But now they're coming out with what, 6? On Vista they claim it's as fast as native Vista because it can use the desktop hardware acceleration. I don't know about XP with the newest one, but you can get Vista-esque skins with it on XP which you can't do with XP theming without other third-party programs (which tend to be buggy and/or ugly and/or quirky).

I use the "Watercolor" theme, which is based off of Microsoft's "Whistler" theme which was used in betas of XP (the idea is it isn't as flashy as Luna, it's closer to Windows Classic but it still exercises theming to look nicer).

Also anyone know if there's a uxtheme.dll hack for Vista yet? From what I gather there isn't... and unfortunately even if there was the theme format has changed (most significant thing I noticed was themes use PNG instead of BMP now) and XP themes, even official MS ones, don't show under Vista.

Vista is a little different. You have to patch 3 files instead of 1, uxtheme.dll, shsvcs.dll and themeui.dll. And their are two types, 32-bit and 64-bit.

Do some searching and you should find some replacement of those files.

Is it possible to apply only a theme from WindowBlinds after you have the .dll hacked?

WindowBlinds doesn't care if uxtheme.dll is hacked or not. It doesn't even use uxtheme.dll... it takes over window drawing entirely from Windows.

Right, but if I hacked uxtheme.dll, could I use a WindowBlinds theme without WindowBlinds?

Couldn't tell you on that one. However unfortunatly a lot of of content like most Dreamscapes (Dreamscene HD movies) are in that format and I can't play em without installing that crap.

No. They use some other silly format for their themes that only their program can read.

I liked style xp. It only took up about 30 megs of stuff. And let me make my boot screen/welcome screen awesome.

Now im on Vista though, So it matters not.

none of the download links on crystalxp work. as in their server isnt responding. grr. i like some of that stuff.

That's not the issue. WindowBlinds takes over window rendering completely, as MAZZ stated. You can't use WindowBlinds themes with anything else because it's impossible.

That is also possible without style xp. Stardocks (makers of WindowBlinds) released freeware programs called BootSkin and LogonStudio to do this.

http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin/
http://www.stardock.com/products/logonstudio/

BootSkin isn't for Vista though (LogonStudio is).

I also believe they do what they need to do and exit, and they don't need to run all the time (well you have to have them run on statup if you choose to have a different theme every boot).