Customizing windows

Soldato
Joined
20 Aug 2004
Posts
3,115
Location
Bournemouth
ok considering my beats of a pc is now a force to be reckoned with around my halls I decided its time to make it look unique on the desktop at least. I got holkd of something called Aqua dock which is very cool, but now I was wondering if anyone knoew how to remove all desktop icons and more importantly get rid of the task bar. I have it set to autohide, but it pops up annoyingly when I dont want it to, and I want it dead! Would be nice if I could still keep something like the system tray in the corner though. I got linked to a prog once that displayed yuor pc temp and hd space on desktop. That would be great to find again.

thnx!
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Sep 2005
Posts
10,001
Location
Scottish Highlands
Have a look through this thread for inspiration and suggestions;
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17403319

If you really want to change windows, have a look at programs such as Litestep or blackbox for windows

http://www.litestep.net/
http://www.bb4win.org/news.php

Personally I don't like these programs as I find them too different, and hard to get used to. But its all down to personal preference. Also have a look at www.deviantart.com for wallpapers, skins, icons etc.

For changing icons I use a great little program called Iphile
http://www.virtualplastic.net/scrow/iphile.html
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
20 Aug 2004
Posts
3,115
Location
Bournemouth
actually, I am still missing the program I can use to disaply stuff on desktop like cpu usage and hd capacity. I tried the one mentioned above but it doesnt seam to like working. It was a different one I used befrpe too, wish I could remember the name!
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Jul 2005
Posts
3,810
Location
Woking
oxygene said:
actually, I am still missing the program I can use to disaply stuff on desktop like cpu usage and hd capacity. I tried the one mentioned above but it doesnt seam to like working. It was a different one I used befrpe too, wish I could remember the name!
Try and learn how to use Samurize (i assume that's the one you couldn't get to work) as it's a great little app that is fully customizable to what you want. Check out come tutorials on the samurize website and you will soon get the hang of it :)
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Sep 2005
Posts
10,001
Location
Scottish Highlands
Samurize is definately the one to use. It can be a little tricky to use sometimes, and a bit of scripting knowledge goes a long way when trying to get really cool stuff working. But its also easy to do the basics. I found the best way to learn is to load up someone elses config, and reverse engineer it, to see how they have created it.
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Jul 2005
Posts
3,810
Location
Woking
messiah khan said:
Samurize is definately the one to use. It can be a little tricky to use sometimes, and a bit of scripting knowledge goes a long way when trying to get really cool stuff working. But its also easy to do the basics. I found the best way to learn is to load up someone elses config, and reverse engineer it, to see how they have created it.
Yep, that's what i used to do. I also used to hae a go at modifying other peoples' scripts and trying to expand on what's been done. You eventually pick it up and from then on it's easy ;)
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Apr 2004
Posts
5,445
Location
Bloxham
I've been meaning to change some stuff in Windows for a while but am sceptical about doing it in case I mess anything up. Can you cause your machine any grief by fiddling?

Also, people all seem to recommend different apps saying some hog resources or have adware etc and others don't. Which would you guys say are the most user friendly and system friendly apps? (apologies for the thread hi-jack oxygene!)
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Sep 2005
Posts
10,001
Location
Scottish Highlands
In theory you can break things by fiddling, but i'd say its pretty hard to do any serious damage. The absolute worst case scenario is that you'd have to reinstall windows again, but thats not likely at all.

As for program resources it varies. For changing themes I use the uxtheme hack, which doesn't use any more resources than windows usually does. The amount of resources Samurize uses varies hugely depending on how you've got your config set up. Usually it doesn't hardly use any at all, mine at the moment uses between 700kb-2mb However I did have one config that had loads of stuff, and updated every milisecond or so, and that chewed up quite a bit of resources. But overall, no it doesn't use much.
 
Back
Top Bottom