Style XP alternative?

[SpyD]

I had the trial Style XP, but it ran out and now i cant use any of my visual styles except XP and Classic... is there any other program i can use that would let me use my other Visual styles?

 

[madmatt]

try andyp's patch, available on this site.

 

[Not Bman]

windows blinds !

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Do what madmatt said & get that patch. Just uninstall ALL other theme managers, apply the patch & away you go. Good stuff. You'll find the link here.

 

[madmatt]

I must disagree with b-man, WindowBlinds (although it is more in depth and can accomplish more) wastes system resources and slows things down. It may do more, but there are also a lot of features you have no need for that still consume resources.

StyleXP (or DLL patches) are a lot better than WindowBlinds (Object Desktop).

Stay on the path you are on.

 

[Grandmaster]

I agree with madmatt, I have used WindowsBlinds and it takes away too much system resources. Use andyp's patcher... much more efficient and it doesnt not take up system resources either...

 

[mbunny]

errr... it actually does take resources, however big your theme is, thats how much RAM it is taking up. This is just hidden rather than being obvious like WindowBlinds.

Windows Classic is the only theme that uses no resources.

 

[madmatt]

Actually, even that consumes RAM, through the process explorer.exe. To a certain extent you are correct, the visual style/theme you choose to run does add memory usage to the explorer.exe process.

However, when you have programs such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, and other Object Desktop programs running in the back ground, they do consume massive amounts of memory in order to run and process your requests.

 

[Grandmaster]

Originally posted by mbunny
errr... it actually does take resources, however big your theme is, thats how much RAM it is taking up. This is just hidden rather than being obvious like WindowBlinds.

Windows Classic is the only theme that uses no resources.

I am sorry, let me rephrase. I meant that the patcher itslef does nto take up resources since it does not need to run in the background. What you are using is the uxtheme.dll that came with XP. That dll and the theme combined take up much less RAM than when you run Style XP or Windows Blinds.

 

[mbunny]

StyleXP also uses no extra memory =P

its only the WindowBlinds that uses extra memory.

StyleXP has an option so that as soon as it bypasses the windows security check, it closes itself so that it has a 0 resource usage.

 

[Darkwolven1]

Has anybody used XP visual tools by Cronosoft? Any good? Looks a bit simpler than Style XP. Also, does a program like Icon Packager use resources as well to keep your icons switched?

 

[sboulema]

Xp visual tools can only change the look of old programs that doesnt change to youre visual style automatically....