BF2S Forums [HOWTO] Sexin up Windows 7 // Interfaces

_{I am not responsible for a dead install, or any damage that may happen to your computer, or your first born etc etc etc}

I am asked regularly about which skin I'm using and how they can mimic my setup as it is in general an eye please.

Step 1 - The Skin

User Interface

Deviant art appears to be the best source for various skins for windows 7. You can find the entire category here

The skin i'm using in my environment is Soft7 2.0


To install any of the skins, you must first patch some of you DLL files. This can be done by using this universal theme patcher.

Once downloaded and extracted, run either the x64 (64 bit) or x86 (32 bit) version of the software, and hit on all the 3 patch buttons. Restart.


Next, download your theme you wish to use, and copy it's contents to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes



Next you must take ownership of C:\Windows\System32\ExplorerFrame.dll so we can subsequently replace it.

Go start -> cmd



Change the directory to C:\Windows\System32



And now we take ownership of the file.



Now browse to C:\Windows\System32 and rename ExplorerFrame.dll.

give yourself permissions by right clicking the file, and going properties>security... etc





and copy over your respective ExplorerFrame.dll.




Finally, double click the respective theme you wish to install in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes

Restart.

Wallpapers



Your best source for any wallpaper you want is Wallbase

They have an amazing collection and sorting system. One of the best websites on the internet in my honest opinion. The dev is somewhat of an idol.



Icons:

You can change the icons of the of the items you have pinned in your task bar.

You can find different icon sets again on deviantart, by looking here

I use the Token icon set myself.


You can change the icon on the actual pinned icons under your appdata, but i find this doesn't work very well and resets quite often.

What i do is create a folder called pinned in my documents, and create a bunch of shortcuts, change the icons there, and then pin these shortcuts. You can follow my screenshots.




Start Orb:

To change your start orb, you can use the Start Orb Changer by Kishan Bagaria.

I use the pure orb




Step 2 - The Tweaks

Removing various elements from your sidebar from your sidebar

There are some things in my sidebar that i never use, personally, those being homegroup, and libraries. You can follow these guides to remove the ones you wish to never see again!

• Removing 'Favorites' from the sidebar
• Removing 'Libraries' from the sidebar
• Removing 'Homegroup' from the sidebar
• Removing 'Computer' from the sidebar
• Removing 'Network' from the sidebar

My final result:





Step 3 - Additional Options

Steam

Steam itself has many themes you can choose from.



This thread on the steam forums outlines most of the themes available for use, and also provides some handy screenshots.

The theme I am using is PixelVision

They recently changed their colour scheme on the friends list to some real eye cancer, you can change the RGB colours yourself in path\to\steam\skins\PixelVision\resource\styles\steam.styles

You can copy paste mine here


Trillian

I use a premium version of trillian, and use the Avion Pro theme.


Rainmeter

Everyone knows about rainmeter. Low resource desktop gadgets. Again you can get all these from deviant art. Head over to http://rainmeter.net/

get your skins here



I use the ones that come with rainmeter.


Userstyles

Userstyles are amazing. I love them.

You can find different userstyles at this wonderful site.


Firefox



You can read more about this here.


I wrote one for BF2s which makes it dynamic widths for widescreen monitors. You can use it here.














And now with all that out of the way, it's time to sit back and party.

Last edited by tazz. (2011-09-17 00:03:50)