1. Desktop theme:
1. Composition: mainly composed of visual style, wallpaper, screensaver, mouse pointer, sound, icon, etc. This can be done by opening windows\resources with Notepad You can find out by looking at any theme file in the \Themes directory.
2. Related tools:
⑴Visual style: StyleXP (produced by TGT Soft), WindowBlinds (produced by StarDock)
⑵Icon: IconPackager (produced by StarDock)
⑶Mouse: CursorXP (note that Chinese usernames are not supported!)
⑷Others: BootXP (modify the XP startup screen), LogonLoader (modify the XP login screen)
>
2. Basic knowledge:
1. Visual Style (also known as Visual Style): WindowsXP uses a new theme manager, which is not as simple as win98. In the Windows\System32 directory, there is a dynamic link library file called "Uxtheme.dll", which integrates the theme API. However, this file compiled by Microsoft does not support third-party (that is, non-Microsoft) visual styles (currently The system only supports luna and royale by default). There are currently two ways to enable the system to support third-party visual styles: one is to install StyleXP, and the other is to install a cracked version of Uxtheme. The cracked version of Uxtheme can use UxthemeMultiPatcher. After the system supports third-party visual styles, if you want to write your own visual style, you can use Tgt Soft's StyleBuilder to edit the msstyles file and the corresponding shellstyle file.
2. Mouse pointer: The mouse pointer currently has two formats: cur and ani. A complete mouse pointer solution should include 15 styles, namely normal selection Arrow, busy Wait, background running Appstarting, link selection Hand, stylus NWPen, mobile SizeAll, horizontal adjustment SizeWE, vertical adjustment SizeNS, northeast and southwest diagonal adjustment SizeNESW, northwest-southeast diagonal adjustment SizeNWSE, unavailable No, precise positioning Crosshair, selected text IBeam, candidate UpArrow and Help. Mouse pointer conversion can be done using CursorXP, and the new version of StyleXP also supports mouse pointer conversion. I wrote a mouse pointer conversion tool myself, novices can try it out :)
3. Icons: Most icons are basically located in the file shell32.dll. There are roughly three ways to change the default icon: one is to manually modify the registry, the other is to use software (IconPackager is recommended), and the third is to use resource editing software such as reshacker or exescope to directly replace the icon resources in shell32.dll (not recommended for novices) . There will be a dedicated tutorial for manual modification methods. Common desktop icons such as: My Computer, Network Places, Recycle Bin, and My Documents can be modified by right-clicking on the desktop-gt; Properties-gt; Desktop-gt; Customize Desktop.
4. Sound and screensaver: Modification of system sound events can be completed by replacing the corresponding files in the Windows\Media directory (it is recommended to back up before replacement). After replacement, the computer may need to be restarted to take effect.
You can also use Notepad to open the theme file, change the DefaultValue= under the [AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\Event Name\.Current] section to the full path of your favorite sound, and then apply the theme file to take effect. Most of today's screensavers have an installation function. After installation, right-click on the desktop and click-gt; Properties-gt; the screen saver can apply the installed screensaver. I won't go into details here.
5. Startup screen and login screen: The so-called startup screen is the boot screen when Windows starts, and the login screen is the screen when system users log in and log out. Do not confuse these two screens. It is recommended to use special software such as BootXP to modify the startup screen, because manual modification is troublesome and requires modifying boot.ini and ntoskrnl.exe at the same time, which is more dangerous; the login screen can be modified using specialized software such as LogonLoader, or After downloading the ready-made Logonui.exe, change the UIHost string key value (the default is logonui.exe) under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon in the registry to the full path name of the new file. Then log out or switch users to see the effect.
Change the XP boot screen
When it comes to changing the Is it done using special software like this?
Wrong, you don’t have to go to such trouble at all. In fact, in Windows XP/2003, you only need to use a secret parameter to change the system startup screen in a few seconds. There is no need to modify the system files, and there is no risk!
Two-step screen replacement
Step 1: Open C:\Boot.ini with Notepad, find the line containing the Windows XP startup item, and add "/bootlogo /noguiboot" at the end ".
Step 2: Find the startup and shutdown screen you made and save it in the Windows directory (C:\Windows). The file name is boot.bmp. Note: Neither the file name nor the extension can be changed. The image requires a resolution of 640×480 and 16 colors.
Restart the computer and see if the startup screen has changed? If you are not satisfied, you can just replace boot.bmp with a new picture. It is so simple!
If you don’t have a suitable startup screen, no problem, just log in to this foreign site, you can find a lot of very beautiful pictures here, use them directly!
If you want to design a startup screen yourself, you can use tools such as Photoshop to process it to a suitable size (640×480), and then save it in 4-bit color, which is 16 colors.
The secret of Boot.ini parameters
If you observe the steps of replacing the startup screen above, you will find: In fact, the main step is to add an important parameter to Boot.ini. Boot.ini also contains many useful parameters, which have been introduced in many magazines and newspapers. Here we introduce a few more important parameters.
1./BOOTLOG: After starting the computer with this parameter, the system will record the startup information in a file for easy viewing in the future. The saving location is SystemRoot\Ntbtlog.txt, where "SystemRoot" represents the system folder, such as C:\Windows.
2./nodetect: There is a trick that claims that changing "fastdetect" after each startup item in the "Boot.ini" file to "nodetect" can speed up the startup speed of Windows XP. In fact, there is no word "nodetect" in Microsoft's vocabulary library, and there is no "nodetect" parameter in the Boot.ini file.
Therefore, changing "fastdetect" to "nodetect" will have no effect. Regarding the "fastdetect" parameter, Microsoft's explanation is to "turn off Ntdetect.com's detection of the serial mouse at boot time."