Ok, this is really nothing new, I have actually been using this for quite some time now but I just recently got around to writing about it on my blog. As many of you know, running Windows XP can be a real drag most of the time. Especially when you get tired of looking at the windows classic GUI (graphical user interface) but who also would want to look at the Windows XP “Luna” theme? The really ugly crayola/playskool blue and gray themes bundled and set as default with Windows XP installations. About 6 months ago I stumbled across something called “UXTheme Patcher” Download Here . This patch will replace the themeui.dll files in your /windows/system32 folder. This will allow you to download and install ANY Windows msstyles (themes) you wish. What are msstyles you ask? They are themes for Microsoft Windows which give it a custom look, many of these themes can be found at Deviant Art, under the “Visualizations” category. In the screen shots you see below, I am using the uxtheme patcher combined with a theme called “Royale Remixed” By a person going by the name of “oddbasket”, this is by far one of the best themes I have found for WindowsXP. The “Royale Remixed theme comes with 3 color schemes, Royale, Zune and Noir. The first screenshot below is of the Noir color scheme, the second is of the Royale and the third is of Zune. You can download the royale remixed theme package Here.

Instructions:

Once you have downloaded the UXTheme patcher unzip it to a temporary folder like C:\temp. When the file has been extracted from the *.zip, navigate to the temp folder (c:\temp) and run the file named “UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.exe” be sure to pay attention to each screen and follow the steps exactly as described in the install process! You will get to a point in the installation/patch where you will need to pause and wait for a screen to appear. Make sure you don’t click “ok” on the patch before you see this window:

This screen is Windows File Protection, it will ask you to insert your windows CD, DO NOT DO THIS! It will prevent the patch from working and display a really ugly GUI/Theme. After you click “Cancel” for Windows File Protection, go ahead and click “OK” on the patch and restart your computer as instructed.

When your computer has restarted, right click the desktop and click properties, then select the “appearance” tab. You should see “Royale” in the list. Select it and then below under “Color Scheme” choose your style! Click apply and bam!

Customization:

Now that you have applied the patch, selected your theme and style, now it’s time to customize the rest of your desktop. Notice how the title bar is thick? I cant stand this so I always apply a thinner title bar, do this by staying in the “appearance” tab and clicking the “advanced” button.

To apply a thinner title bar, select “Active title bar” under the “Item:” and then below decrease the font size to 8, this will automatically give you a title bar thickness of 18, click apply and BAM! Now you have the thinner title bar.

To get yourself some custom desktop icons, use Icon Packager, from Stardock, They have thousands of different icon packages to choose from and it’s free to try! I am using the Bohemia Icon theme, Available HERE.

Now, some of you might be wondering where I got those cool little desktop “widgets” to the right of my screen.

Well, I have tried MANY Different widget tools and honestly, Yahoo Widgets is the best. Click here to get the Yahoo Widgets engine, Make sure during the install you don’t install the yahoo toolbar, unless you want it, I chose not to. I am using these widgets:

Yahoo Weather! (Bundled with Yahoo Widgets)

Analog Clock (Bundled with Yahoo Widgets)

Arlo Rose Calendar - Available Here

All the widgets are customizable with color and transparency, some widgets have other individual preferences depending on it’s function.

Finally, the wallpaper I use is available Here.

Troubleshooting tips:

1) Make sure the themes service is enabled.

Click start, then click “run”. In the “run” box, type: “services.msc” (no quotes) and click “ok”. Scroll down until you see a service named “Themes”. Right click on the word “Themes” and click on properties, then under the dropdown menu titled “startup type” make sure “Automatic” is enabled. Then click Ok. Restart the computer.

NOTE: If “automatic” is already set under “startup type”, then leave this setting alone, there is no need for a system restart.

2) Make sure during the installation, you waited/paused as instructed for the “windows file protection” dialog box to appear. Be sure to click cancel for “windows file protection” then click on “ok” to finalize the uxtheme patch.

3) If you have to re-apply the patch, it should ask you “are you sure you want to restore the original theme files”, click “yes” or “ok” and make sure to restart your computer system. After it restarts and returns to windows, run the “uxtheme” patcher again, make sure to follow the steps carefully. When you click “cancel” for “windows file protection” it will ask you “Are you sure you want to use these unrecognized file versions”? Click “yes” or “ok”, and continue to follow the steps.

Props go out to the main man oddbasket for creating the hot theme!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to click on “comments” below!

Enjoy!

I’m not usually one to endorse a Microsoft product, Windows Media Player 11 is an exception. When I first executed the new version I was extremely pleased to see that it utilized some of Vistas new GUI (Graphical User Interface) design and ultimately matched my current XP theme Zune Remixed (black). That doesn’t say much in the way of usability or functionality however, so let’s get into that. I loved the new layout for the “library”. There are three different optional views for displaying your library of songs and albums inside WMP 11, they are icon, expanded and details. I chose to leave it at default (expanded) when adding my song folders this was a benefit down the road.

I kept the “expanded” view for a few reasons, I liked the how it displayed the album cover (if applicable) along with all of the other information that “icon” displayed, only lacking a couple bits of info that “details” provided like “composer” and “Release Year”. Adding your songs is a breeze! Just click and drag the folder containing your songs into the WMP 11 Library screen it will automatically catalog all of your songs for you. It catalogs songs into artist and album. This worked out great for me considering I have about 10 folders containing a total of about 5000 songs, none of which are really organized by year, artist or album, Media Player takes care of that.

At this point it was time to burn a CD, since all of my songs are now organized, this makes it incredibly easy to scroll through and select the songs I wish to burn. Just click the “Burn” tab at the top of the screen and notice a new window pane will appear to the right. You will now click and drag the songs from your library into the “burn” pane and click the “start burn” button below.

It’s actually really THAT simple. So what are the drawbacks to WMP 11? Well, I can tell that on most systems running anything below 1GB RAM and a decent video card, WMP 11 might operate a little sluggish. Also, for reasons still unknown to me, when burning a CD, WMP 11 TAKES FOREVER! It STILL goes through and verifies each song, then “converts” and then “starts the burn process” like in previous versions of WMP. I invited my sister over to burn a couple cd’s to verify the usability for a normal/novice pc user. I was embarrassed at the fact it took about 45 minutes to burn 2 music cd’s. That is too long! There is quite possibly a way around this, but so far NERO blows WMP 11 out of the water when it comes to the actual burning process, WMP 11 wins over usability. All in all I give WMP 11 4 out of 5 stars because I feel it functions the way a Media Player should, It’s usability is supreme over competing players and It has some valuable added features. It lacks the fifth star only because of the slow burning process”.

About 8 months ago I was fooling around inside Windows Media player 10 and I figured out a way to export a playlist I had created into an Excel database. It’s actually really cool! If you have some sort of database affliction and feel you desperately need to catalog all of your songs in Excel. At any rate, HERE is the excel file, I like how it catalogs all the info like album, artist, rating, length even bit rate! how cool? . I am looking at WMP 11 on how to do this again, I forgot!

PRICE: RETAIL- $44.99

The release of the XBOX 360 brought a sigh of releif to the PC gaming community hoping make use of it’s controller under the Windows platform. This controller uses a standard “USB” connector and will install under Windows using the proper drivers supplied by Microsoft. The controllers sleek design is slightly smaller than the original XBOX “S” controller and also sports a softer feel. The black and white “thumb” buttons on the original XBOX controller were replaced by two extra triggers on the 360 version, these are programmable as most buttons are via the controls menu in the majority of games. This controller operates pretty well in most games post calibration in “start/control panel/game controllers”. For games without support for gamepads there are several third party tools like Pinnacle which allow you to create custom game profiles and map keyboard commands to the controller. I have tested and confirm this controller works excelent under: NBA LIVE 06,Tiger Woods 06, NHL 06, Need For Speed Underground 1+2, HALO PC, Harry Potter - Chamber of secrets, Harry Potter - Goblet of fire, All Lord Of The Ring games and Track Mania Sunrise. Not to say that this controller won’t work excelent under other games, though these are which I have tested.

Now for those “not so great” aspects of this controller. The pretty silver “X” in the center of the controller takes you to the XBOX LIVE menu on the 360 console. However, this button has no function as of yet for operation on the Windows platform. The “X” Lights up for aproximatly 3 seconds if it’s connected during the PC’s boot sequence. One of the biggest downfalls of the controller is the lack of “rumble” while operating under Windows. I have yet to find support for this even with third party tools. That is a big no/no. The lack of support for the issues I’ve mentioned come from the drivers Microsoft has provided for this controller. I have written them several times about these issues and will keep writing them until I see some progress, But you know Microsoft! All in all I give this controller 4 out of 5 stars simply because It has EXCELENT design , feels comfortable and operates as a “game pad” under windows far better than any I have come across as of yet. The reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is for the two main Issues I stated above, The lack of Rumble and support for the guide “X” button. Come on Microsoft! Release new drivers/fixes so I can hook you up with that extra star!

PRICE: 5.99 - OEM

As most hardcore PC enthusiasts, Modders or technicians will tell you creating stable system temperatures is a vital aspect when building a new system or over-clocking a processor. I purchased this product from NewEgg along with several other items including an ASUS motherboard, ASUS DVD BURNER (see review), AMD PROCESSOR and various other items. As always NewEgg shipped it to me lightning fast!
Thermal compound is designed to be applied conservatively between the CPU and the heat sink. Since the top of the CPU (processor) and the bottom of the heat-sink contain microscopic valleys the compound is designed to fill those valleys and thus create a consistent transferal of heat. I’m not able to give you specific temperatures your CPU should operate at because it comes down to the “core” of your specific Processor. How ever, AMD and INTEL have in depth information on all of their CPUs/CORES on their websites. Ideally lower temperatures are best, although too low can be just as dangerous as too high. An overall good range of temperature is “25-55c” for modern CPUs. (AMD claims some of their processors are stable with temperatures up to “75c”!!) Arctic Silver 5 has a some what smooth metallic consistency. After anywhere from 50-200 hours of application the substance thickens slightly but DOES NOT act as an adhesive. I applied arctic sliver to the following:

AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)
AND
eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)

The temperatures for the “AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)” prior to arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle = 34c
Load = 45c
The temperatures for the “AMD 64 3000+ CPU (Processor)” after the arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle = 29c
Load = 41c
The temperatures for the “eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)” prior to arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle= 49c
Load = 61c
The temperatures for the “eVGA 6660 GT GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)” after the arctic silver application were as follows:
Idle= 47c
Load = 60c
(Remember that GPU’s are a different than CPUs and are designed around operating at higher temperatures)

Overall I give Arctic Silver 5 out of 5 stars simply because it cost only around 6 bucks and lowered my CPU/GPU temperatures by a few degrees. That might not seem like a lot, but to me it’s worth the money, especially without adding any noise or special cooling.