Show us your desktop

[embi]

The background is of a beautiful pic I took on holiday in Tasmania, on the Tasman Peninsula near Premaydena if anyone's really interested .
Sorry its only 1024 x 768, my moniter (an old CRT ADI-55 my uncle gave me for free) can display 1280 but its too small (17")



Drew (in a PM) asked about my awesome theme. I got it without ANY programs at all, but the drawback is that it takes a little tweaking.

A disclaimer first: I am not responsible for any damage done to your PC for the following steps. At your own risk.
Just to warn you, Cowburn screwed up his internet by Step 1, but he might not have done it exactly as I describe. Just to warn you.

1) First, download a patched version of uxtheme.dll. This file controls how Windows displays themes and makes sure that only Microsoft style files are used (.msstyles). The patch simply removes the latter so that any .msstyles files can be used.
I got it from
here
but its availiable from many places, just google "patched uxtheme.dll"

2) Now you need to replace the Windows version. This is not as simple as it seems, as Windows has some built in functionality to stop viruses deleting/editing Windows system files. To bypass this, you can use a special program called Replacer, which is availiable from here.
Figure out how to use it on your own (its fairly simple), I can't be arsed to tell you. Just replace uxtheme.dll with the patched version.

3) Next, you need to download an .msstyles file from somewhere. One of the best sources is DeviantArt, a site which many of you have probably heard of before. For those that haven't, the skins section is here.
Do a search for Vista themes, the one I have is called Cosmos. Just follow the instructions once you get it.

 

[usy]

 

[afridi25]

mine

 

[evertonfan]

Is that Ganguly on the right?

 

[afridi25]

yep its a old onre and inzi on the left
it supposed to be India Vs Pakistan war type but inm cricket

 

[gaurav_indian]

afridi you r keeping too many setups on your desktop surely that will slow down your startup.

 

[afridi25]

yeah i will delete them

 

[madforcricket]

heres mine(with my own wallpaper)

 

[F4rrukh]

madforcricket i think it would have looked better without that transparent picture at the back..

 

[DJ Ager]

It's well done and nice, but Henry's better and not as cocky.

 

[madforcricket]

i dont think ronaldinho is cocky. henry is really good and humble thats true.

 

[DJ Ager]

Here's what I have sometimes.

 

[embi]

Okay, this isn't a desktop, but my logon screen. Like my Vista theme, it doesn't require many third party programs such as Windows Blinds, but complete control and completely free, no ads DIY with resource editors.

If you're wondering how I did it, download a resource hacker (google it). My favourite is the XN resource editor. just google it.
Anyway, back up the logonui.exe file (in system32), maybe copy it to my documents or something and have a look at that. If you want to see your changes, just use Replacer (you can find in a previous post in this thread of mind, just google it again) and replace the one in system32. Don't worry about screwing up your system too much, if you get it wrong it will just come up with a Windows 2000-style login box.
There are plenty of tutorials availiable for this, theres some good ones on the UIFILE, which controls the layout. I expect to see some decent logon screens from now!!

 

[usy]

lol looks funny embi.

 

[embi]

I'm not a renowned graphics maker, so I did that logo in Paint. I've got an actual image editing program now (GIMP, its free and its decent) so I could do another one. But it looks good enough I think.