Misstuned

Are you sick of how Windows XP looks? Does the blue/silver/olive just not match with your wallpaper? Are you still on default settings?

Would you rather your desktop looked something like this?

If so, this tutorial is for you. I will first tell you how to use free msstyles you can find on DeviantArt, then in later tutorials I will discuss other methods of modifying your desktop.

First thing you need to do, if you’re running Windows XP Service Pack 2, is unpatch your Windows installation so Windows allows the use of third-party themes. Download UltraUXThemePatcher here. As far as I know, this file is virus-free.  (My antivirus declares it safe, anyway.)

Download and install that, and reboot your PC. Then head to DeviantArt. Go to Browse, click on “Categories” Customization -> Skins and Themes -> Windows Utilities ->Visual Styles. Choose your browsing options (I normally pick popular and all time for looking for themes), and look around until you find a theme that you like.

For the demo, I picked Fantastic by ~fantastic902.

Download the theme. Find where you saved it on your computer. Themes are usuallly zipped, so unzip it, and go into the folder. You’re looking for a file that says “Windows Visual Style File” over on the left in folder view.

Double click on that file. The “Display Properties” window will pop up.

Select apply. Then Windows will dim the colors and apply your theme. It will look something like this for a minute.

Then your theme will be applied. You can click OK and get rid of that window. For the Fantastic theme, it looks like this.

If you don’t like how something looks, go into Control Panel, double-click on “Display”, and the same “Display Properties” window will pop up again. Go to the “Appearance” tab, and click the “Advanced” button near the bottom right corner. This window will pop up.

Change any properties you don’t like. For instance, I don’t like how most of the text in this theme is bolded, so I switch the bold off. You can change things in this window by clicking on them in the tiny demo window inside the actual window. After you make any changes, click OK in that window, then Apply when you’re back to the one you applied the theme on. The fonts or whatever you changed will apply.

If the theme you picked is a Mac clone, and you need the Windows taskbar to be at the top of the screen, right-click on the taskbar, if “Lock Taskbar” has a check next to it, select it again to un-check it. If it doesn’t have a check next to it, go to the next step. After the taskbar is unlocked, just drag it up to the top of the screen.

With this tutorial, this is my result.

Of course, there are definitely other ways of modifying your desktop. Other desktop modification tutorials:

• Using the Mac Dock on Windows XP
• Finding Better Wallpapers
• Changing Your Cursor