[WMCoolmon]

1) Is there some kind of app or shell extension that that will let me put quicklaunch buttons along the top of the screen? (I'd rather not deal with a shell replacement...geoshell was nice, litestep was rather newbie-unfriendly, and neither did the shell integration...little annoyances like Search being harder to get to and having to re-click folders after creation to rename them.)

2) Is there some kind of non-resource-hog app that'll let me set some kind of skin? (I'd like to darken things down a bit, for night use)

Both of these would have to run on Win2k, as that's what I'm using at the moment....

[pyro-manic]

Kalfireth gave me a link to a nice theme in the last "post your desktop" thread a little while back. I can't remember what it's called, but he got it off deviantart. Looks pretty nice:



As for quicklaunch, I've seen Mac OS X-style taskbar thingies for windows. Haven't ever used one, though...

[Kosh]

The windows taskbar can moved to the sides or the top. if that is what you are reffering to............

[Galemp]

Follow these simple steps.
[list=1]

• Minimize all windows.
• Right click on task bar, uncheck 'Lock the Taskbar' (if it's checked)
• Right click on task bar, go to Toolbars > QuickLaunch (if it's not already checked)
• Grab the QuickLaunch bar by the dotted edge on its left and drag it somewhere on the screen. This window can now be docked to the top or side as a bar and set to auto-hide, or have large icons.
[/list=1]

I have my QuickLaunch bar set like that on the right side of my screen for access to my most frequently used programs.

As for skins, there's a particular format Windows uses called MSSTYLES which means it won't natively use any themes other than Windows Classic and Windows XP. You can find a modified DLL if you look around (or ask) that will let you use .msstyle themes without any 3rd-party apps.

[Fineus]

Theme information

To enable custom styles on Windows XP download UXTheme:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=140707

As for the system skin.. I'm running "System 4" which you can download from here:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/9889460/

That said, having checked the guys gallery it looks like there's an update..."System 5":
http://www.deviantart.com/view/20568306/


If you have any problems getting it going, let me know and I'll troubleshoot for you.

[WMCoolmon]

Weel, thanks Thunder, but I'm kind of using 2K instead of XP, so I'm not sure if that'll work.

Galemp, TY, the quicklaunch thing worked perfectly. I'll see about the DLL patch you mentioned.

Something else I might as well ask about is video playback...it seems to be totally broken on my computer; all videos run at slideshow speed. Actual slideshow speed. We're talking a minute a frame, while the computer behaves as if it's locked up. There's no HD access, and the only fix seems to be to close the offending program via task manager or hitting the X repeatedly and hoping a click gets through.

It's probably somewhat beyond the scope of anyone here; I selectively installed components from Win2k via slipstreaming, so I probably forgot some silly minor dependency.