xp themes etc ?

Windows doesn't allow third party themes/colours by default and so they cannot be applied straight away. To get new themes/colours setup you first need to patch the uxtheme.dll which allows windows to use third party themes.

To do this you can use the Neowin UXTheme patcher. This will do everything automatically with a nice GUI. Once it's done you can download third party themes from places like here. To use the custom themes you just double click on the msstyle file and it will open up display properties.

I think you'll have a hard time finding themes which only alter the colour of the standard windows skin as most themes have the aim of making it look different to standard.

BTW: Sometimes the Neowin patcher doesn't work and you may still not be able to use custom themes, if so then there is a manual way of doing it. Post back here if it doesn't work.
 
Ok, it didn't work for me either. What you need to do is to download a program called Replacer which you'll use to replace the uxtheme.dll safely. Then you need to download a pre-patched uxtheme.dll to replace the standard one in windows. Get it from here.

Once you have those downloaded then run replacer and follow the instructions. The original UXtheme.dll is located in C:\WINDOWS\system32, you'll need this when using replacer. Replacer should tell you when to reboot etc. and once it's done you should be able to use custom themes.
 
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