Hum. explorer shells.

[sosaiso]

Okay, once again, feeling brave I decided to install and try litestep today. Looking through about 500 skins to pick the perfect one. Except loading windows was painfullly slow. And the fact that I don't have winamp doesn't help much either. I don't think Litestep is for me.

I once had WindowsBlinds, and that worked great. Is there any freeware that would do the same thing? I guess all I am looking to do is change the ancient Windows XP bubbly thing.

Thanks.

[WSFuser]

u can use the builtin MS visual styles.

first u need to patch the uxtheme.dll (u can either replace the file manually or use Uxtheme Multi-patcher 5.0 (http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml))

then go to deviantart or other site with visual styles and find one u like

after downloading teh visual style, extract the folder or files to C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes

if successful, ur new style should be accessible via teh display properties > appearance (tab)

[iceni60]

if you use the uxtheme patcher you can use these themes and many more

http://www.deviantart.com/view/29511577/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/4591314/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/8521744/

and here's a transformation pack, i haven't used it but it was posted at neowin (http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showforum=36)
http://www.tcmagazine.info/modules.php?modid=4&action=show&id=413

you can also change your icons and use a dock, like Mac's use.

[sosaiso]

uxtheme patcher is t3h aw35om3.

Seriously. And Deviantart. 5 hours later, I finally decided on a Vista-like theme. future+now= good.

Thanks all. Though, Opus looks really intriguing... I have a few wallpapers that I might want to use that with in the future.

About 6 hours later, I even hacked myself a new winlogon. Windows is finally starting to look a whole lot prettier.

Much thanks all.

[sosaiso]

I was wondering what you all use to change the appearance of your desktop icons. Is there a program that could change all of it into something prefabricated all at once?

[WSFuser]

i use iconpackager. i dont know the exact differences between the free and paid versions tho.