gigi2005

Dose anyone knows a good programe for skining i whas tried WindowBlinds but i whas very dispointed whit it the thing i could do whit whas very restricted and i couldn,d do the thing whit it that i wanted to do.
It also slowed my computer down and it whas dificult to delete.
What i am looking for is somthing that dosn,t slow my computer down and i want to skin as much as posible aspesialy the Windows starting screen becose its boring.

Miroku4444

You could try Stlye XP. I liked it, but the fonts were too big. I went back to the default XP skin.

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"You'll hunt me. You'll condemn me, you'll set the dogs on me. But that's what has to happen."

know1

Any non-permanent visual changes that you make to XP through a background program that is always-on is going to be taxing to your system resources. The only was around it is to lessen the degree of visuals, such as disabling transitions and other stylistic elements—but then what is the point in having the program.

You can always change the color of windows, text, font, font size, window title bars, etc, through Display properties/Appearance/Advanced. This is part of XP, and will cause not system slowdown whatsoever. This is just color and text though, and will not change the shape of windows, bars or transitional effects.

Bottom line is that if you are looking for more advanced visuals, like what you see in Vista Aero Glass, then you are going to need a good system, which even then will be in constant use just from the visuals. You are right about Window blinds using resources, but so does Vista. The only difference is that Aero Glass, being integrated with the OS, works faster than any 3rd party visual effects program.

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aceman67

In my experience, the best skinning engine for windows is in fact, the windows skinning engine built into windows.

all you have to is patch the uxtheme.dll

You can get a patcher for the file here: Download Uxtheme Multi-patcher 5.0 - Uxtheme Multi-patcher - A patch that will change your uxtheme.dll on Windows XP - Softpedia

you will then have to find themes, and the largest collection is on DeviantART: Browsing Visual Styles on deviantART

There are also Theme packs that add visual styles and other stuff to the system, two of my favorites is the OSX theme pack, and xpIze.

FlyakiteOSX - Modify . Simplify . Aquafy [The Official Site]
Home of XPero - XPize homepage

any themes you download go into your C:\Windows\Resources\Themes folder

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sukotsu9

I've been using TGT Soft's StyleXP for some time now, and I've got to say that I love it. Definitely worth the $20 to get rid of XP's green "Start" button. You can set it to use very little system resources (usually around 1-2mb with moderate effects). While some themes' fonts may be too big, testing various themes may get the effects you're looking for. CompLuna is really small, even on a 1280x1024 monitor. And StyleXP makes use of the Windows built-in skinning engine.

I'm also test driving their SpyderBar widgets manager (freeware). So my XP looks much like the typical Vista screenshots. I'm not final in my opinion, but it's running well.

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aceman67

StyleXP is a waste of memory and money when there are free alternitives out there that do the exact same thing and use very little or no memory then normal. The sites I listed above will do everything StyleXP does.

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sukotsu9

Sorry, I know there are a lot of skinning programs available; I'm just speaking from experience. With 1.5GB RAM, I'm okay with 2mb devoted to a pretty slick skinning engine. But "free" certainly sounds good.

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