{"id":5694,"date":"2008-06-19T11:34:34","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T10:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-apply-third-party-themes-to-windows-xp\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:29:58","slug":"how-to-apply-third-party-themes-to-windows-xp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-apply-third-party-themes-to-windows-xp\/","title":{"rendered":"How to: Apply third-party themes to Windows XP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Windows XP includes three color schemes you can choose from to customize the system&#8217;s native visual theme, namely blue, silver and an olive green that nobody I know has ever used. But what if you grow tired of this theme? You can download additional styles from many different online resources, and use them to give your XP a fresh look.<\/p>\n<p>The problem comes when these themes don&#8217;t come from official Microsoft sites and are not signed by the Redmond firm. This doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re dangerous at all; it&#8217;s just that they have been created by third-party designers who don&#8217;t work together with Microsoft. These themes therefore are not signed for Windows, and don&#8217;t work properly: they show glitches, dark spots and shadows that end up ruining the final appearance.<\/p>\n<p>So if you want your newly downloaded themes to look perfect on Windows XP, you need to patch the uxtheme.dll file first. Simply download the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.neowin.net\/forum\/index.php?showtopic=308905\">UXTheme Multi-Patcher<\/a> tool and run it. Your Windows theme will go back to a basic, gray design and you&#8217;ll eventually see this window:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/06\/uxtheme02.jpg\" alt=\"Apply unsigned visual themes\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Press the Cancel button (and the Yes button on the following dialog window), go back to the UXTheme Multi-Patcher interface and click on OK. Then restart your system and you&#8217;ll be ready to apply whatever visual theme you prefer, signed or not. See how my Windows XP looks like with the <a href=\"http:\/\/vistamizer.en.softonic.com\/\">Vistamizer<\/a> style!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/06\/uxtheme03.jpg\" alt=\"Apply unsigned visual themes\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Windows XP includes three color schemes you can choose from to customize the system&#8217;s native visual theme, namely blue, silver and an olive green that nobody I know has ever used. But what if you grow tired of this theme? You can download additional styles from many different online resources, and use them to give &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-apply-third-party-themes-to-windows-xp\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to: Apply third-party themes to Windows XP&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-5694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336034,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5694\/revisions\/336034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5694"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=5694"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=5694"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=5694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}