When you right-click on Windows 7 or Windows Vista Desktop and choose to Personalize in Windows Color & Appearance, you’ll see a set of 8 colors to choose from. This can change the windows’ color, start menu, and taskbar by selecting one of the available color schemes.
However, you can add a custom color scheme to it, or you can also create your own set of colors using a color mixer if you wish.
Here’s how you can do it. This requires the following:
- Restorator
- Registry Editor: regedit
- Image editing software like Adobe Photoshop
Instructions to add colors, customize colors in Windows
First, run Restorator and open themecpl.dl l (located under C: Windrows System32) and navigate to BITMAP. Now extract any bitmap files from 1 to 8.
Next, run Photoshop and change the colors by adjusting hue/saturation. Open the extracted bitmap image in Photoshop and click Image> Adjustments> Hue / Saturation or press CTRL + U. Adjust or change the colors as desired and Save and exit.
Again run Restorator and open the themecpl.dll file and click on Resources> Add Resources or Press CTRL + U.
Now select the bitmap file, drag, and drop into the highlighted area.
Now run regedit to open Registry Editor and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion ControlPanel Glass Colorization Swatches
Create a key with the name GUID… it must be unique among all existing GUIDs in Swatches.
(Simple trick: Copy any GUID like {FD81078C-1B36-4595-A92E-91F05C4FA5DC} and change one of the characters or digits … I’m sure, It would be 99.99% only the new GUID is { FD81078C-1B36-4595-A92E-91F05C4FA5DD})
Create a DWORD (32-bit) value and name it Color. Set the color value you want.
(Simple tip: Right-click on the desktop and personal navigation> Windows Colors & Appearance, now set your preferred color using the color mixer Start Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows DWM and click on ColorizationColor and copy its value And paste in the color DWORD value)
Create a DWORD (32-bit) value and name it NameId. Set the value to 69 in decimal. This registry value reads the string from the themecpl.dll.mui file located under C: Windows System32 en-US. The string ID 69 in the themecpl.dll.mui file contains the Vistas string value.
Create a DWORD (32-bit) value and name it PreviewId. Set the value to 103 (the bitmap resource file’s ID or name was added to themecpl.dll.)
Create a DWORD (32-bit) value and named PreviewOrder. Set the value to 9; Indicates the color scheme added in the 9th digit.
Create an extended String (REG_EXPAND_SZ) value and Resource name. Set amount for themecpl.dll.
You exit and restart