XP skin and MSN.

Sunday, February 24, 2008 by MaxAlcolo | Discussion: Skinning

I recently installed a XP skin on my computer, and since it has a black background, my MSN conversations are kind of hard to read now. Is there any way to make it so the skin wouldn't be applied on MSN ?
Pugboy
Reply #1 Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:30 PM


Select your EXE, and not to skin it.
MaxAlcolo
Reply #2 Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:36 PM
I see, but I changed my XP skin without using any software. In that case, would it still be possible ?
I heard using a software would use a lot of my RAM and CPU power just to apply the skin.
DonDodds
Reply #3 Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:46 PM
A) You were lied to. I've run Windowblinds and ObjectDock on my ancient Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with no slowdowns. Once the skin is loaded, it uses nearly no extra resources.

Without a theme manager program of some sort, you're not going to be able to selectively apply the theme.
Philly0381
Reply #4 Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:52 PM
What did you use to change your XP skin? If is wasn't a Stardock product, might I ask why you chose to come to these forums? Just curious.  

Stardock products have been proven not to use up RAM and CPU by theirselves. Usually it can be traced to what other software you are running or possibly in the case of widgets, objects or docklets what they are doing or their function. At least that's what I understand, could be totally wrong.   
Bichur
Reply #5 Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:57 PM
doesn't msn still have the capability of changing the backgrounds in settings?
MaxAlcolo
Reply #6 Wednesday, February 27, 2008 4:03 PM
Philly: I just patched a file so Windows would let me use any skin I would put in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

Bichur: It still didn't work. The XP skin would just "overwrite" whatever I had done on MSN.


I now have WindowBlinds installed on my computer and I'll be able to sort things out.
The only problem is that the skin I want to use doesn't seem to be compatible with WB. I looked around to see if I could a WB version of that skin, and all I found was a link to a forum under maintenance. Here's the [url=http://www.xptheme.info/resources_view.cfm/hurl/specific=5989/rnam=phpnuke%20downloads/]link[/url].

Anyone knows where else I could find the WindowBlinds version of that ?
someone31988
Reply #7 Thursday, March 6, 2008 3:55 PM
You could use SkinStudio to convert it to a WB skin yourself.
vStyler
Reply #8 Thursday, March 6, 2008 4:18 PM
there are 1000's of WB skins, you could probably find something similar, if not you can use the free version of Skinstudio to convert an .msstyle to a WB by simply , after installing Skinstudio, clicking the .msstyle file and following along.

Then you can edit the window color in the colors section of Skinstudio.

Alternatively you can change MSN's window color by using the background changing feature...using any plain white image.

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