Trick Out Your XP Desktop For Free

Windows XP has been Microsoft's most successful operating system to date and a lot of people are still using it – on their home and work PCs and on netbooks – so here are a few tips to help you make your Windows XP desktop a little bit better – all for free and very easy for beginners

On older and slower systems you will notice a decrease in performance if you install all of these programs – rather select the ones you like & use and run those – don't try installing everything! Note – these programs are all completely free and have not got any spyware or malware associated with them.

• Want the Windows 7/Vista start button instead of the normal Windows start button? ViOrb will give you just that (note don't try it if you use auto-hide) – ViOrb is here
• Want a Windows 7 taskbar in XP? ViGlance is here
• Want to add some transparency to your taskbar? – Transbar is here
• Want to be able to reorder your taskbar tabs in the order you want? – Taskix is here
• Want to minimize programs to the system tray instead of the normal taskbar? TrayIt is here
• Want a 3D program switcher like Windows 7 &Vista? WinFlip is here
• Want a better looking system clock? LClock is here
• Want transparent window borders like in Vista and Windows 7? True Transparency is here
• Want a bunch of great new wallpapers for your desktop? Wallbase is here
• Want some decent screensavers? Really Slick is here (you must have a graphics card) otherwise if you don't get some free Looney Tunes screensavers here
• Want a dock similar to Mac OSX? Rocketdock is here. If you don't like Rocketdock check out this post here and also Radian here
  
• Want to create a 'stack' of programs in your taskbar? Standalone Stack is here
• Want to integrate system features into your desktop & more? Rainmeter is here

Okay, so those are just about all the programs I can think of (if you know more, leave a comment). Now, you need a nice theme. The official themes from Microsoft are listed below but there are a lot more themes out there. These are the offiicial ones:

• Royale Theme – Blue theme – Get it HERE
• Royale Noir Theme – Dark theme – Get it HERE
• Zune Theme – Another dark theme with a bit of orange – Get it HERE
• Embedded Theme – Another nice blue theme – Get it HERE

Those are the only official themes Microsoft released that I know about – however if you install a patching program you can install a lot of other themes that are not official. If you are running Windows XP Service Pack 2 – get this patch here. If you are running Service Pack 3 – get this patch here.

Once you have installed the patch you can get a whole lot of great themes @ deviantART here but there are a lot of other places on the internet with unofficial themes available. Otherwise, if you are a little bit more knowledgeable you can install Rainmeter and get some great skins also @ deviantART here.

Finally if you are not keen on fiddling that much a transformation pack is probably the best idea. This is a program designed to automatically apply some of the above programs to your XP installation with the minimum of effort. Please note – as with all the software above you may notice a performance decrease depending on your system – so disable, or uninstall what does not work and keep what you like. Here are some transformation packs to check out:

• Windows XP to Windows 7 Transformation Pack – go here
• Windows XP to Mac OSX Tranformation Pack – go here
• Windows XP to Ubuntu Transformation Pack – go here