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LukeSkillz

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  1. You don't need a skinning engine for XP. It already has one. I haven't had much luck using this method on Vista, but here's how to do it on XP (very similar to making a theme for Lameskin, I believe). 1-Download the tool: Get a resource hacker of your choice (ResHack is my personal favorite for this kind of thing. http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/) 2-Prepare for the Skin: Before you do any skin changes, it would be a good idea to switch your theme to Windows Classic. Sometimes your theme can get kind of messed up if you don't. You will find all of your currently installed Windows XP themes in C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes (assuming your hard disk is 'C'). Go there and duplicate the 'Luna' folder (you can actually use any theme, but this one is the best for starters). Rename the duplicated Luna folder to whatever you want your theme to be named. Inside that folder you will find several things, but for now let's just focus on the skinning. 3-Replace Bitmaps: Open up ResHack and navigate to your duplicated Luna folder. Set the viewing mode to 'all' (as the skin file won't show up as a Win32 executable) and open up the Luna MS Visual Style. You can then access all the bitmaps that make up the Luna skin (NOTE: ResHack isn't always good for extracting files. A way to work around this is to view each individual bitmap in its full size, press Print Screen, open up MSPaint [or whatever image editing program you prefer] and paste it there, setting the size to show only the bitmap from the Visual Style.) Once you have made all your bitmaps, in ResHack, go to 'Action', 'Replace Bitmap', and replace each bitmap with the ones you have made. WARNING: If your bitmaps aren't the exact same size as the originals, the skin will yield unpredictable results! 4-Finalize the skin: Save your changes to the Visual Style, and then, still in ResHack, open up the 'Shell' folder and edit whichever DLL's you find inside (this part is optional; the DLL's typically just contain background images and scripts designating which fonts will be used and stuff like that). Ok, you're almost done. Now rename the original Luna folder to something else, and make your skin folder be named 'Luna' instead. Now open up the display properties and set the theme to Luna. Your skin should now apply. BUT, I bet you don't want it to be named Luna, do you? To fix that, simply choose 'Save As...' and save your theme under a new name. If you change your skin folder name to the exact same thing, all should go well. You should also be able to set the original 'Luna' folder back to it's original name and be fine. So there you go. How to skin XP. Hope this helps. B)
  2. I've only recently gotten into using a VM (previously I used a real 98 box, but I upgraded to a Vista machine...well, the hardware was an upgrade, Vista was a downgrade), and Virtual PC 2007 hasn't failed me so far. I've used a couple different versions of Windows XP and Windows 98 SE without any trouble. So that's my recommendation for XP/Vista users: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. 98SE doesn't overheat anything for me, and only uses a tiny fraction of the CPU and RAM.
  3. Most software can run fine on Windows Vista, though it may take a little bit of extra work. Here's what I've done to get all my programs running (even things designed for Windows 95!) 1: Look for an update to the program on the internet. Oftentimes there is one, and even if it isn't intentional, I've found most of them to fix compatibility problems. 2: Right click on the program and select 'properties'. Then click on the 'Compatibility' tab. Choose to run it in compatibility mode for a different OS.
  4. Strange things, computers.
  5. It may, but I'm not sure about that. There are some limitations to the system builder program, including having to be a system builder yourself, or buying a machine that an actual OEM system builder installed the OEM software on. This is one of those grey areas where you buy a system builder OEM copy, from the system builder, but he/she sells you the OEM software and doesn't actually install it on hardware. I suppose if one was to sign up for the OEM system builder program... Yes, so far I've personally seen every version of Vista gives you the ability to install Windows XP (Home, Business, Pro) without giving you a 30-day activation warning or any such limitation. You can simply install XP over Vista, no questions asked. But generally I'd say that any version of Vista that doesn't have the word 'basic' next to it is a good upgrade from XP. Like it has been said, it runs faster in almost every aspect, and memory management is exceptional. I moved from Windows 98 to Vista, and I discovered that I no longer had to expect 50 MB wiping off 0.4 GB from my hard drive! 50MB was 50MB, just as it should be.
  6. WIM on XP? Heck, I'd like to be able to edit them on Vista! I found imagex on my recovery disk, but so far if I try to use it, all that happens is the window I'm in closes. I heard the only way to have a plain and simple WIM editor is to be part of a beta testing group at MS, but registrations for it are closed. I also heard that Vista SP2 would include that editor. So it's possible that until that happens and somone ports the program to XP (or makes a similar one) you're out of luck.
  7. Seems like you've got your problem fixed already, but just another tip for you if something else like this happens: lots of times this kind of thing happens when your computer is low on RAM or video memory. Since you upgraded from XP, it's entirely possible that those things are getting more eaten up than usual. You may benefit from expanding your RAM and video memory for peak performance
  8. Though I'm not entirely sure how to do it myself, I will say that I'm 99% sure that you'd need two tools: 1: Regedit (hopefully you know how to use that already) and 2: ResHack. Just google for ResHack, you'll find it, and it's a free program. My guess is, you'd need to locate and modify a dll in Vista that contains the pictures for the start menu, as well as positions for the buttons. Though ResHack might be enough on its own, one never knows. Any code that needs changed that ResHack can't handle should be able to be done through Regedit. The downside to all this: It would take a significant amount of time to locate such files, as the contents of windows dll's are rarely indicated by their name, not to mention it would be easy to mess up your Vista installation and be forced to reinstall. But, if you are willing to take that risk, go right ahead. B)
  9. I would say that this is a very bad idea. On my Vista PC, the Recovery disk only uses 10 of the 250GB on my hard drive. Vista takes up a good number of gigs too, but I still say that approx. 200 GB is plenty for me, and it is really nice to have the Recovery, even if you don't think you'll use it. Heck, I would already have lost some major files if I hadn't made backups to the Recovery disk. You do know that you can install things to the Recovery disk, I do it all the time. There's really no need to delete it, and by not doing so you get the bonus that it can restore your computer if it gets messed up. Just as far as wondering if such a thing is possible, it is, but you have to reformat both hard disks in order to do it, and probably have to do some programming yourself. All in all, I'd say it's not worth it. Hope this helps
  10. Thanks, man! I think http://www.myvistaboot.com/Joomla/ just became my favorite site! Awesome boot screens, WAY better than the plain and simple black screen with green load bar...I love it!
  11. Thanks, it's up and running well now! You guys rock That wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be...
  12. Hey all! I've been using 9x for a long time, and never experienced anything like this before. One day, I boot it up, runs fine, has RP7 and numerous other updates, but I noticed that I was running low on memory. So I uninstall a few old games that I don't use anymore. Next time I boot up, it loads the background, but then says that MSVCRT.DLL, powerprof.dll, and shldll.dll are missing, and it stops the boot up process! I press Ctrl + Alt + Del and try to manually start up explorer.exe, and it gives me those messages again! I never touched those dlls when I got rid of stuff, but when I booted it up in live puppy linux, sure enough, they were gone! I can't just put the dll's back because there is no way to copy them off of cd with linux already in the drive, so I'm guessing I'll probably have to reinstall windows from DOS. But I can't seem to just run the setup on the windows 98 CD... In short, can anyone tell me how to reinstall Windows 98 from DOS, or upload the DLL's so I can copy them to the hard drive with linux? Thanks in advance
  13. I like it, but how do I use it? Won't I have to put some code into skin.ini or in a .reg file to get this to work? Or does it actually just apply itself when dropped into a skin folder? Maybe I'm making this harder than it should be, but from what I can tell...
  14. I've thought of that, except I sometimes use another Windows 98SE machine with a different video card (but the same amount of video memory) that can switch to 1024x768x24. Actually, it can even go as far as 1280x1024x32. So I figure my main machine should be able to also, at least up to 24 bit.
  15. Nice one! the only thing I have against it is that the caption buttons' highlight and close icons are backwards. What I see is that the button is normal, then I move the mouse over it, and the button gets dark. I click on it, and it gets light. In the real WMP11, you move the mouse over the button and it gets bright, click and it gets dark. Other than that, I think this is a great skin!
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