Thursday, December 4, 2008

Vista to Mac Transformation

Ah! For all you Vista users, here's something really cool. If you ever liked to look at Apple's 'Aqua' interface, this is perfect for you. This is a little mini-tutorial on how to make your Vista...look like a Mac. Right, let's get started.
First things first. There's gonna be a lot of modding your machine, and you'd better have some good knowledge of how Vista works. You need Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1, for all you noobs), and you need to go into User Accounts (which you'll find in the Control Panel). Once you're there, type 'uac' into the search bar at the upper right. User Account Control will pop up, and you're going to want to turn it off. Once you've done that, restart your machine and pull this page back up.
On to the next step. We definitely need a dock for this, so head on over to RocketDock and download it. Install the software, put it on the bottom, customize it to your liking, then grab the Leopard skin for RocketDock.
Now, you may like the default icons for RocketDock, but, personally, I hate 'em. So I cheated - I went over and grabbed RK Launcher. After installing it, I went into the RK Launcher folder (in C:\Program Files\RK Launcher). I copied the 'icons' folder into RocketDock's own icons folder, and went from there.
Great and all, but that doesn't give you two things: first, it doesn't make Windows Explorer look like Aqua; second, it doesn't give the dock the 'Stack Docklets' ability.
To solve the second problem, grab Stack Docklets, download 'em, and install.
OK, that solves the second problem. But what about the first?

This one involves a few more steps. First, you need two mod tools - don't worry, you don't have to do anything REALLY serious with 'em. Download VistaGlazz. After installing, run the program and apply BOTH PATCHES. Apply the patch that requires you to restart FIRST.
Once you've done that, find Vista DeskHack. At the bottom of the page are three downloads, select the one that says 'VistaDeskHack1.1'. Extract it to 'C:\Program Files'. You'll find its install file in 'C:\Program Files\VistaDeskHackv1.1\Working Theme Names\App\VistaDeskHack_1.1'. After installing, you'll get a Command Prompt telling you that one file was copied, or something like that. Hit any key to continue.
Now you can get to the fun step. Grab Mac OS X cursors here, and the Mac OS default Wallpaper here. Zoom in on the pic, right-click and save as 'macoswallpaper' or something like that. Drop the picture in your 'pictures' folder, go to 'personalize' again, and set it as your wallpaper.

P.S: Once you've done all this, you may want to burn all your settings and such to a CD. Not to mention you should always create a system restore point before attempting system changes. Doing so saved my skin once.

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