question about Windows XP desktop toolbar/taskbar

[Soylent Brice]

how do you customize color and appearance of menu toolbars for Windows XP?

aside from the standard options available like classic, and the silver green and blue.


are there any other options? i have Windows XP 64 bit.


everything i pull up on google is no help at all. mostly help for 2007 Vista.

thanks!

[RoyGBiv]

1. You want free or to pay for it?

If you're willing to pay for it, it's fairly simple. There are a couple of popular applications that'll do this, complete with custom themes to customize all sorts of stuff about your desktop.

StyleXP: http://www.tgtsoft.com/

WindowBlinds: http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

All these things do is utilize some "hidden" "features" of WindowsXP, which is to say they manipulate system files and such. You can do this yourself, but you have to know what you're changing.

I've got my Windows virtual machine customized into an all-black taskbar for some reason ...



I don't even remember doing it actually. Musta been bored. :) What this means is I don't remember the exact process. (One of the benefits of a Linux machine is that changing your desktop's look-and-feel is a bit more straightforward.) If you want the free route, I'll see if I can dig up what I did.

[Soylent Brice]

6. that's what i was looking for!! thank you!!!

that tgtsoft one looks neat.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Old Screenshot

Just found this in my PhotoBucket account ...

Here's a screenshot of my old Windows box. This was done with StyleXP, IIRC.



From the date, I see it's just a few days over four years old. August seems to be my month for screwing around with my desktop appearance ... oh, who am I kidding. I play with eye candy more than I should. Anyway ...

I had customized icons and was using a fading option in StyleXP for the taskbar, which is why it looks, well, faded. The desktop widgets (and rss reader and system info display) were from something else ... don't remember what.

[jayfish]

7. Another StyleXP Desktop.

When it worked correctly it was very nice.

Jay

ON EDIT: The custom icons were not a part of StyleXP.

[Why Syzygy]

3. Not sure I understand your question...

but, I wonder if what you're looking for is found in
right-click Desktop > Properties > Appearance > Advanced

[RoyGBiv]

4. What you can do there is limited ...

... at least until you've messed around with some system files.

MS went out of its way to force a certain look-and-feel on users without paying for the privilege.

[Why Syzygy]

5. I spend most of my time looking at my browser..

and there are severl skins for it. Could even make one if I was into that.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Update

I spent some time on my Windows box this weekend and decided to figure out how I did this without additional software.

It's a matter of patching the uxtheme.dll file.

You can do it easily with Multi-Patcher

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml

This allows you to use themes made for things like StyleXP without actually having StyleXP. Of course you don't get the additional features of those packages (transparency, easier changing of boot screens, etc.) but if all you're wanting to do is change the theme, this does the trick.

After running the Multi-Patch program, which, as you will be instructed, requires you to ignore Windows warning you that you're changing a system file, you reboot and can then install various themes and change to them via desktop options.