Skinning Xp
I recently was in the mood to spruce up my desktop and I found 2 things that allow you to customize a boring XP scheme for something a bit less mundane.
The 1st thing you need is a tool called Replacer which is a DOS command tool for replacing files in win32 you can get it Here
The second thing you will need is the uxtheme.dll found HERE
Just make sure to get the dll that corresponds with your service pack mine was the bottom one for service pack3 I am running Windows XP on HP Compaq Presario Media Center which is a couple years old.
What you do Is really quite simple if you are comfortable tinkering in your hidden files if not then I don’t suggest to do this as I would hate to see you mess up your system, as for me I’ve always been the kid who takes things apart just to see how it works, now you will have to locate your original uxtheme file in
My Computer>C://Windows>system32>uxtheme.dll and drag it into the replacer tool make sure you have the tool open then drag and drop and hit enter once you have done this then you can go ahead and do the same with the new uxtheme.dll after you hit enter it will prompt you yes or no just key in Y and enter then hit any key to close it down, from there you can now find some msstyles online which I have a few places I like to go the 1st place is skinbase.org and the second one is GUIStlyes there are a few place online that have msstyles just google msstles for xp and your sure to find something you may like.
Just to let you know not all of these styles may work its a matter of trial and errror but most important thing to know is you must drop the folder into your theme files located in My Computer>C://Windows>Resources>Themes just copy and paste your new style to this folder and you can then right click your desktop and go to properties> appearance if it is a good one then it should show up in there just click the windows and buttons dropdown menu and apply the one you just setup. hope this helped you out a bit on sprucing up your OS.
