Customising Windows 7 – The Easy Way


 



When you have owned a PC or Laptop for a while, you may want to change a few things to personalise the desktop, or maybe some of the functions. You may want to get as much speed as possible from what you have by turning off non essential programs, or even uninstalling programs that you don't use, in order to free up space and maximise efficiency. 


 




You may want to change the desktop wallpaper from standard to a photo that you have taken, or a wallpaper downloaded from a website. Maybe even change icons or folders.





The easiest way is to use the Personalisation Panel built into W7, and you can download themes as themepacks (usually as a .themepack file, which has an integrated installer) and you simply double click the downloaded theme and it self installs. This will change the look and feel of the desktop, but wont change anything else, such as the boot screen or logon screen.






A friend of mine had an Acer laptop, and the Hard-drive failed on him, which meant that he lost all recovery for that laptop. He hadn't made any recovery disks, so installed a standard W7 disk, but wanted it to look and feel like it originally did. So he installed an Acer OEM themepack that improved the desktop, but the bootup needed to be changed, and with a few tweaks and additions, we made it bootup like it originally did.



Customising your Operating System can be fun, but it is not without it's pitfalls. Some things require registry changes, some thing's can be changed by installing a program, which on restarting after install will no longer boot to desktop. There are little things that you can do, that will totally transform your machine, and I am going to list some simply programs that you can download for free, and make simple customisation changes to your machine.






Firstly, When you power up your machine, it will boot to the initial bios screen, then the Boot screen, which shows the animated Windows Logo, then we see the Login screen and finally the desktop. 
 

The Boot Screen is customisable, and the easiest way to change it is with a free program called



This program can replace the default boot animation with a customised boot skin & change to text which accompanies the animation, both on power up and power down. The only issue I have had is that it didn't appear to work for W7 Starter, probably because starter has the boot animation from vista.

If you fancy a customised boot skin, I recommend http://www.windows7bootscreens.com/


where you download your choice, and use Windows 7 Boot Updater to apply your choice to your machine







The Logon screen can also be customised, and usually requires some registry tweaking, and file placement. One program that takes the hassle out of this is

Tweaks.com Logon Changer - http://tweaks.com/software/tweakslogon/

This program is availible for W7 and later, but be sure to download the correct version.

This program will make the changes, resize the picture or photo and also give the option to revert any changes that you don't like. Really simple and easy to use, you can use almost any image you want. I have been using this for a while and don't recall ever having any issues.






The actual desktop is full of potential, which loads of programs that can be used, but I am going to keep it simple here also.

Firstly, if you run either W7 Starter or Home Basic, you lack the personalisation panel and the ability to install themepacks. This is due to these versions being designed for low end machines, netbooks, atom powered units, etc. They just don't have the processing power for aero support, and most times they lack memory.






There are ways to change the desktop on these versions though, with the use of third party tools. One way is to use the Personalisation Panel program, but I find it a bit limited compared to what it promises. An easier option would be Oceanis change background W7 program. Oceanis does require a reboot, but they both do the trick equally well.


If you have a laptop or desktop with a dual-core or above, then you could try the Ultimate Windows Customiser.





This is pretty much a one stop shop for easy customisation. It is important to note though, that if you plan on using this, you cannot use any other tool, as this program doesn't play well with others, and will throw a strop and give you error commands.


If you fancy a drastic change, then there are some serious programs out there such as StarDock







StarDock carry an array of products such as WindowBlinds, but these programs are not free. If you would like to check their products here's a link


The easiest way for a full skinpack is to find yourself an all in one. My recommendation would be


You can make your machine look like an Alienware, or have W7 that looks like Ubuntu linux, make your machine look like W8.






These are great, but they are third party skinpacks, and require a piece of software to make it possible to install third-party software.

Skinpacks.com supplys everything you need to download and install, and instructions under the tab 'Help & FAQ's' once you've installed one, it's easy.

There is one piece of software that I have used, and it is free, but it takes a bit of getting used to, but is worth listing here.








It's a program called Rainmeter, and to be honest, it's quite exceptional, and one of the most popular customising tools for W7. There are lots of skins out there, offering unique desktop themes




here are some examples






Just remember to be careful where you download from, follow instructions, and you can make your machine look absolutely awesome.

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