Many of us still think Vista is too Expensive and of course it is. Another bad thing about Vista is the compatibility. So, why don’t just turn our Windows XP into Vista.
I had installed Vista ultimate on my PC a Couple of months ago. I worked fine but I really hated it because:
- I was not able to install my Sound card on it.
- I was not able to Install Nero on it.
Everything else was a charm, especially the
Windows Aero and 3D flip (
Vista is all about these two things). Everything else was like XP, and XP is also much faster than Vista. So I got rid of Windows Vista. But I really missed the Aero effect.
After a month I figured how to turn my Windows XP in Windows Vista. It looked so much similar to Vista that my brother got confused so did everybody else who saw it. Here are the screenshots of my Windows XP PC which look like Vista.



Here is how you can also turn XP in Vista:
First you need to patch Uxtheme.dll, because the themes won’t work if you have not patched it. Download this
patcher which will do it for you and the Restart your PC.
Next thing you need to do is to find a good theme. The one I used in the above screenshots can be downloaded from
here. You can find Vista themes
here. When you have downloaded the Desired theme, Unzip it and copy it to
C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes.Get a nice Vista wallpaper over
here or you can also search for them in
google.
Now download the
vista sounds and Unzip/Copy the to
C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA folder. Goto Windows
Control panel >> Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices >> Sounds and change the sound for respective events.
For the Vista like "Taskbar Screenshot Utility" (I can’t find any other good word for it) download
Vista Task Tips and install it. You can resize the screenshot by scrolling the mouse wheel. Now when you hover a open window in Taskbar, it shows you a screenshot of it.
For the Aero Effect I use
this. And for 3D flip I use
Winplosion.
For Sidebar I use Google sidebar bundled with
Google desktop. There are many others and better sidebars for XP than Google sidebar but I like Google’s because it adds functionality to your desktop, and because I use many other services of Google which are integrated with Google Desktop. Other can be downloaded
here,
here and
hereFor the start menu I used
VistaStart and downloaded some
Vista Screensavers from
here. I downloaded the
Vista cursors and
Vista icons.
To make my OS look more like Vista I used the Vista theme for my
aVast antivirus software and which can be downloaded
here. I also downloaded the
Vista theme for
Firefox. I changed the color scheme of Office 2007 to black which gives it a Vistaish feel. I also downloaded the
Vista Explorer to make my PC more like Vista If you know some any other tweaks, let them come in comments.