Windows 7 Themes from scratch

Hello Everyone.

This post is for the those who use Windows 7 on their systems and are a big fan of its display features. For those who love to play with the different display features (or desktop elements such as desktop background, color, sounds etc), .theme file is a boon for them. A '.theme' file is basically a simple file that enables you to change the appearance of various desktop elements as mentioned earlier. One another benefit of .theme file is that you can share your customizations with your friends also. For sharing you can create a '.themepack' file.

There are two ways to create a .theme (or a .themepack) file:-

1. Using Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization option. Under this, you can make respective changes to your desktop background, window color, sound and screen saver. With this one 'Unsaved Theme' will be created under 'My themes' section. Click on 'Save Theme' Option and give appropriate name. Example in our case. This theme file is stored at the location 'C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes'.

 

2. Second option is to create a theme file from the scratch. For this simply open a notepad file, add contents and save it with an extension '.theme' instead of '.txt'. For details of this theme file you can refer here. A great detailed description of the file has been presented. 

• Using the manual provided at that site, create your own theme file and save it with the name-Example.theme. Please note that in the following two sections, you specify the correct path for the wallpapers:-

[Control Panel\Desktop]
Wallpaper=DesktopBackground\picture1.jpg
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=2
Pattern=
ScreenSaveActive=0 

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
ImagesRootPath=DesktopBackground
Item0Path=DesktopBackground\picture2.jpg
Item1Path=DesktopBackground\picture3.jpg
Item2Path=DesktopBackground\picture4.jpg

• Now create one folder with the name of your theme (Example in our case) and transfer it to C drive so that its location becomes C:\Example.
• In this folder, create another folder 'DesktopBackground' so that its location becomes C:\Example\DesktopBackground.
• In this folder, add all the wallpapers that you want to add to your theme.
• Then put your theme file (the one you created above) in the Example folder.

With this, our Example folder is ready.

• Now this complete Example folder has to be converted into a cabinet file. For this follow these steps:-

1.Download the Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit.

Download the first file.

   2. Create c:\cab

   3. Unzip cabsdk.exe into c:\cab\

   4. Open your command prompt. For this, press Win+R, type cmd and hit enter.

  
   5. Now in cmd prompt, navigate to c:\cab using cd command as below:

Type cd\ and hit enter to move to C drive.

 Type cd cab and hit enter to move to cab directory.
 
  8.  Then type the following:

c:\cab>c:\BIN\cabarc   -r  -p  -P  Example\  n  Example.cab  c:\Example\*.*  (To know more about cabarc, then type c:\cab\cabarc)

  9. Change c:\cab\Example.cab into c:\cab\Example.themepack

  10. Example.themepack is the final product.

 

Now you can distribute this themepack file to your friends for sharing purpose. Just double click on it and this theme is available for use in your personalization folder under control pannel.

 

Now create as many different themes as you want to justify your moods and enjoy.