[uNtOldPAIN]

Today's tip is on applying custom Visual Styles, or themes, to Windows XP... By changing the current theme of your XP desktop, you can achieve the look of Windows Vista, OS X, or other customized layouts while still running XP...

If you'd like to apply a different Visual Style to your desktop, you will first need to patch or replace the uxtheme.dll in the C:\Windows\system32 directory... The original uxtheme.dll provided by Microsoft requires that Visual Styles be digitally signed, so we'll replace the DLL with one which allows unsigned Visual Styles to be installed...

The easiest way to achieve our desired results is to download an already patched DLL... To patch Windows XP SP2, you can download the "UXTheme Patch for Windows XP SP2 Final" utility from here, which is also available elsewhere...

After you have downloaded the patched uxtheme.dll, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the Windows\system32 directory... Now, rename the original uxtheme.dll to uxtheme.bak so that we'll have a backup in the event we need one later... Now extract or copy the patched uxtheme.dll into the C:\Windows\system32 directory...

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