I know what you’re thinking, it sounds like one of those websites that offer the "free download" and then you find out that it’s the product you’re going to have to pay for - not the download. A clever and annoying play on words..

Anyway, that’s not the case here. This truly is free. Windowblinds? Windowsblinds? We don’t need no stinking Windowblinds! That’s right, why should you pay for a 3rd party app like Windowblinds to skin your OS, when it’s already built right into XP?! The reason is, and you may not realise this, but why you normally have 2 or 3 skins in XP is because that’s how Microsoft want it (in an almost applesque sort of way.) And the reason you can’t install 3rd party skins in Windows is a file called "uxtheme.dll." This little file prevents any themes that aren’t signed by Microsoft from showing up in the menu and being used by the Windows XP GUI.

So you need a fix for this file. And it comes in the shape of the "UX Theme Multi-patcher." A program to undo what Microsoft did. Run it once and it will patch your "uxtheme.dll" file. After this is done (and you did read what the little box said, didn’t you?) Windows will try to warn you that a system file has changed. This is perfectly normal and you can safely cancel windows from trying to put the old file back. Once done, do a reboot and visit the following sites for some nice themes (I’ve included the one in the example to get you started.)

• UX Theme Multi-patcher
• "Cerulean Theme" from example
• ThemeXP.org
• XPTheme.info
• Belchfire
• Customize

Please bare in mind that you do this at your own risk - don’t blame me if you fry Windows. However, that being said I’ve never heard of anyone having problems installing this fix.. And if you want the original uxtheme.dll file back, just run the Multi-Patcher again.

Update: If you’ve installed Windows XP SP3, it will overwrite your patched ‘uxtheme.dll’ file. You have to amend it manually. To do this, boot into safe mode and replace the uxtheme.dll file in the Windows\System32 directory with this one. This is at your own risk, so always make backups first before messing with your system! I can say it worked a treat for me with no problems