Windows XP Customization

Hello ^_^ its been awhile since i last posted something. i recently found a awesome Windows XP Theme for my PC, i decided i wanted to post about how you can customize your Windows XP beyond the limit they annoyingly set for people. Windows XP by default doesn't support custom Themes, its rather frustrating too since there are hundreds of themes out there and Windows XP only allows you to install 5 extra legit Themes...

Well anyway lets get to the customization.. first you'll need to patch a .dll file is your system32 folder, i know its annoyingly risky to fiddle with the system32 files but if you feel like you want to proceed go Here and follow the small tutorial on Patching the UXTheme.dll, though that tutorial was good enough for me, I'm going to walk you through it too. download the correct patched UXTheme.dll from Rafael's site this patch removes the limiter off of your themes so you can use any theme you want, in my case i had to get "6.0.2900.5512_EN.rar" which holds the patch for the English Service Pack 3 UXTheme.dll.

before continuing i just want you to know that patching the UXTheme.dll file has its risks.. some unfortunate people have reported their system getting messed up and having to run system recovery. to prevent this make sure that you grab the right patched UXTheme.dll you do not want to patch an SP3 UXTheme with an SP2 UXTheme that would be bad.

After getting the correct patch go and grab the stable release of Replacer, once you have them both, open start menu and go into run and type C:WINDOWSsystem32 once your in your system32 folder, click something to highlight it and press "U" to search through all the files that start with "U" once you find the UXtheme.dll right click it and copy it, paste it somewhere safe. Now open Raplacer and drag the uxtheme.dll into the replacer, make sure you drag the 1 that's inside the system32 folder, it should ask you for the replacement simply drag the patched UXTheme onto replacer and wait for it to finish... reboot your system and if everything went without error you should be able to use Custom themes. Note: i vaguely remember getting an error message at first but it still worked.

now that you can use custom themes you'll actually need themes lol so here is a few sites.
Skinbase a good site to find some nice MSStyles.
Deviant Art has some really good MSStyles, just try searching for some.

once you find a theme and download it, go into Run and type C:WindowsResourcesThemes
most of the themes you download come with a folder already in the .rar just extract that folder into the Themes folder, and you should be able to find the theme you downloaded by right clicking desktop and going to Properties, go to the Appearance Tab and look in "Windows and Buttons" your new theme should be there for you to use.

if you have any questions just ask in the comments and I'll be glad to try and help. ^_^