Hey dy I dl'ed one from dev art... now how do I install it?

normally when you dl things like that they come in a pakage, and normally in that pakage there's an uninstall thing.. o-o

i want an installer.. i dl'ed the thing hessah gave to allow these type of 3rd party things, and dl'ed the theme, and used the only installer in it.

im so confused

I did all the shit it said, now I cant even go back to my XP theme, just the windows classic theme Y_Y

Did you restart after installing it? If it ain't working just run the .exe again to revert to default settings. There's some issues with getting it working depending on your service pack.

The instructions on that site should be alright. You can double click .theme files to get them working, which theme did you download? It might not be a proper winstyle.

Btw.. thanks T6 for the links! xD

I'm using royal theme.

Awesome.

Ah.. i'm getting the same problem as Mikey.. even when I was just trying to load the XP theme...

Error Msg:
An exception occurred while trying to run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDL L "C:\WINDOWS\system32\desk.cpl|,Display"

=/

All of what Dynamics said is correct except patching uxtheme.dll is not legitimate per se. It is, technically, against the Windows EULA (which prohibits you to modify any component of the OS therein since Windows is "closed-source", not "open-source"). However, this customisation culture has become so popular that it is considered "normal" these days to install a visual style that is not digitally signed by Microsoft (ever wonder why Royale, Zune and Embedded themes work just fine without patching anything?).

As for patching the uxtheme.dll, I always use the Multi Patcher (which caters for up to Windows XP SP3 but not Vista, go here to get the uxtheme.dll patcher for Vista).

Note that you have to wait for 1 minute or so because during installation, Windows will ask for the CD to restore system file because the uxtheme.dll is being overwritten by an unrecognised version, click Cancel to ignore this warning. Then reboot and you're done.

As for the real visual style, it depends on your taste but I have been in love with this theme.