Installing New XP Themes

[owensdj]

I'm looking at the themes for Windows XP on ThemeXP. That site says something about you must install some 3rd party software called Style XP to be able to install the new themes on the site. I thought you could just download new themes into the themes folder and pick it from the themes list.

 

[Antoneo]

bump i would like to know as well

 

[DukeFan21]

You need Style XP, or the Style XP UXtheme something. One of those you need.

 

[igiveup]

Well, there are Themes, and there are Visual Styles. Visual Styles you need Style XP for and the other is just an exe file that pushes stuff to the correct folders, then you pick the theme just like you would normally under the display properties section. Style XP is a free download, and so far it hasn't asked me to register it, but I haven't been running XP for more than 30 days. Who knows.

I am running Forever Blue, its one of the top ten. Kinda nice. If you use Style XP you don't have to unzip the stuff. Just leave it, fire up style XP, chose visual styles and then add style on the right side of the window. Browse to your zip file and then accept. If its a Theme it will tell you it can't find an acceptable msstyle or something. If thats the case, unzip it and run the exe.

 

[crazydave]

Not 100% sure on this but I think the reason you need StyleXP is that Windows by itself only allows digitally signed themes (ie from MS themselves), the reasoning being they don't wanna release anything that is not fully tested and doesn't work (creating more complaints, etc) Unfortunately that also means the only styles you get are the ones that are built in.... StyleXP changes this behavior so that *any* style (not just signed ones) will work...