Sunday, March 9, 2008

How to make Vista look like XP

I just made the jump to Vista, purely for a 64bit Windows Operating system that has hardware support (There is of course 64bit XP, but it seems most hardware vendors put their hands over their ears and say "la la la I'm not listening" whenever you mention it). The most annoying thing for me, was the theme. I hate it, I hate the visual styles, I hate aero, I hate all of the shadows and transparency effects, in fact, it gives me a headache, literally. I tried to get used to it, tried tweaking it, turning off stuff etc but it didn't help. The main qualm for me was the black two-toned taskbar. The windows classic theme for Vista is a joke, it looks worse than it did in windows 98. I just wanted Vista to look like XP. So, I set about googling, though most of my results returned people wanting XP to look like Vista, it seemed I was one of the few who want it the other way around. I soon found out, that basically, Microsoft has done its best to stop custom themes, to perserve the branding of vista I believe (ie you look at a vista pc and you know its a vista pc), only themes created by Microsoft can be used. One option, is to use Windows blinds or something similar, but I want to increase performance, not reduce it! So that was out. I then stumbled upon Deviant Arts collection of custom themes, and noticed they used a hack to get the standard .theme files to work. I was told that Vista Glazz did the hacking for me and then all I had to do was double click the theme file. This didn't work either - I'm not sure why though. In the end, I used Tune Up Utilities. This allowed me to simply select what theme I want, and apply it, nice and easy. Then, after searching around and downloading a few themes, I discovered that a DeviantART user by the name of 'psychoB' has converted the old XP themes to vista, brilliant! Here they are: Luna Metallic (the theme I am using) Royale (Standard XP theme) and even the Zune theme See his other work at psychoB's deviantART gallery.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wowee!! Thank you sooo much for posting this. I do agree, most people want it the other way around, but after a while, all these reflective things get really annoying so thanks very much!

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! soo much for posting this. I bought a HP laptop with that vista crap in it, I wanted to format it and install xp but I don't intend to spend still much money on it. I simply hate those visual styles, if I disable them I get the style that is worse than Win98. Can any one bring out a theme converter so I can have all my favourite themes in vista.

Anonymous said...

You are the man.

Anonymous said...

Thank you.

I just had to break down and get a new Vista laptop as my old XP one died and I literally was on the verge of tearing my hair out in trying to find out how to do what you have perfectly described in this post.

Thank you SO incredibly much.

- TWM (audiobookcorner.blogspot.com)

Unknown said...

Hello How do I get these themes downloade? thanks a bunch

Unknown said...

Hello How do I get these themes downloade? thanks a bunch

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I've been trying to find a way to do this for about a week now (was just forced into Vista) and this is definitely the answer.

Anonymous said...

This is the best themes ever made!! My computer got faster after changing to this theme/s!!!!!

U OWN, THANK U VERY MUCH

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

If you are still a Windows XP user like me, you should definitely check out this cool free software called Vistamizer, which can make your XP look like Vista.
While there has been quite some negative comments about Windows Vista since its release last year, one thing for sure is the new graphical interface of Vista is really cool.. a lot cooler than Windows XP.

The good thing about this software is that it will backup all the changes that have been made to your system, so you can easily revert it back to the original system setting.
I installed Vistamizer on my Windows XP few days back, and have no complaint on it so far. It's stable, and does not affect the system performance.
My friend actually thought that I have upgraded to Vista when I show them my new desktop . A great software to make XP look like Vista.

Anonymous said...

PLEASE HELP ME I DOWNLOADED THIS AND I CAN"T FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE IT!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

Thanks, i had the same problem. Wanted to use all of my 4GB RAM but had some problems with xp64.
Anyone knows how to make explorer look more like xp´s. I really waste a lot of time with it, it's like i'm lost when i try to browse for my files. Haven't found yet what is exactly is so annoying with it, but it just is.
I refuse to install a 3rd party browser

Anonymous said...

thanks man i have been trying to find this answer since Vista came out. ps, im on Vista PC #2, lol