Vista Glazz and Vista Themes
This tutorial will teach you how to install a Windows Vista Theme, complete with full transparency (the Full Transparency only works with Windows Aero enabled PC’s)
Windows Vista spoke of alot of features but when it arrived many of the features were nowhere to be found which left the hacking/modding community alot of work to do.
Anyway I wanted to highlight to utilites which can really enhance the appearance of Windows Aero (with very little performance degradation). The first tool you’ll need is Vista Glazz by Code Gazer which you can download below:
Vista Glazz Official Code Gazer website
Vista Glazz is a really neat utility which automatically replaces the Windows Vista .dll files required to change your Windows Vista Theme.
So First download Vista Glazz install it and run it you should get a screen like below:
It’s pretty straight forward to use, simply click the Computer Icon to change the .dll files and then click on the Color Palette Icon to change the Visual Style, this allows for transparency even in maximized windows (pretty cool).
If everything worked properly you should notice that when your Windows when maximized will maintain their transparency.
Now for maximum effect you need to download a new theme, I recommend the Windows 7 Theme by Vishal Gupta:
Download Windows Seven Theme Here
Follow the isntructions on that website, one problem I had was in the c:/Windows/Resources/Themes/ folder you must have the directory structure right.
e.g.
a .theme file directly in the Themes directory
then a folder with the same name as the .theme
with the shellstyle folders and other things in it.
TIP: Look at the default Aero folder for guidance otherwise you might not see any difference
The above problems are where most people run into problems so if you have any questions or it’s not working leave a comment below and I will try and help.
Another theme I recommend is the MaxClear theme which can be downloaded here:
Thanks for reading!
May 12th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
[...] Link [...]
August 1st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
nice and very informative information
May 9th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Windows Vista is good but it can hog your CPU and Memory.;:’