Hey,

There are thousands of programs like winstyles, objectbar, windowsblinds which make windows 98 look like anything and they do it quite neatly. But the fact is that all start with windows 98 boot and reside in the background and take up memory slowing down things. Is there a manual way of customizing the looks of windows 98 without using any programs. I am a newbie in this department and have spend days searching for answers and in doing this i had to reinstall wnidows 98 several times because most of the programs just would not let go!

for all element i guess you must using several programs, some suggestion:
1. for desktop appereance you could use alternate shell (Aston Shell, Talisman, SharpE, GeoShell, Litestep, BBLean, etc)
2. for windows metric (close,min,max button, taskbar) use winblind (memory hog), efx (dead), Chroma (several skin) or Lame Skin
3. for other such as icon, wallpaper, sound scheme, cursor i think you can find by yourself a flavour

2. for windows metric http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/eppie.html
http://www.virtualplastic.net/#

...he doesn't want skinning programs...

Resource-editing the files will work... as well editing the code directly (you have to know some programming / reversing).

BTW the Min,Max,Close, etc. buttons are contained within the MARLETT.TTF font file, you could edit that if you wanted them to look different.

http://wint.virtualplastic.net/ --- This site has a ton of guides on hacking windows gui, alotta fun.

Virtualplastic.net

Thanks for letting me know.

The directions are written in a very easy to use manner. All the customizing sofwares uses these same rules and techniques written there.

e.g.,

Icons can be changed both through registry edits and hacking dll or exe files and there is no other way of doing it. The programs just make it easier for us by doing it themselves, that is why they charge for there efforts.

gee i never realize it