How to install custom Windows themes

Sick of the same boring Windows themes in Windows XP? Basically, you get to choose from Classic style and XP style and choose from three lame colors. Not very fun! And sadly, Microsoft does not automatically allow you to use third-party themes in XP.

In order to use custom third-party themes in XP, you normally have to patch some system files. Luckily, there is a cool program that I came across that called UXSTYLE that lets you change Windows themes without modifying system files.

First, go to the UXSTYLE homepage and click on the button to the left, called “play with the bits, blow up your PC in the process”.

Once you download it, unzip it and install the version that corresponds to your hardware (32-bit or 64-bit). That’s it! Once the program is installed, you won’t see any desktop icon, taskbar icon, or anything else.

Basically, it creates a new service called the UXSTYLE theme manager service. Now it is up to you to install new Windows themes. So how do you do that? Here’s an example.

Step 1: Download the Royal Noir theme for Windows XP from here, which is a nice blue theme. Scroll down to get to the download link.

Step 2: Next, go ahead and extract the files. You should see two files and one folder called Shell.

Step 3: Go to your Windows XP theme directory (C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\) and create a new folder called Royal Noir. Place all the extracted files into this folder.

Step 4: Now double-click on the luna.msstyles file in the folder and you will get a dialog box like below, which you need to make sure looks the same:

Step 5: Now click OK and the new custom theme will be applied! Simple as that! You can download as many themes as you like and simply create a new folder under C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

Here is what my Windows XP looks like after installing the Royal Noir theme: