Make Windows 10 look like Windows 7/Vista (Also show us your Windows desktop customizations)

[Azther]

Since @Mr. Fox showed an interest in these customization in a different thread and mentioned how others might also like to know, figured i'd write a little guide. Also figured this could be a combo thread for those who would like to show off their Windows specific themes/customizations and overlays etc.

 

A few years back Glass8+ was the goto solution to get somewhat of a aero effect on windows 10, however support for that stopped once v1909 came out and hasnt been updated since. It was only a few days ago i found out that Windowsblinds 10 from Stardock actually still gives the aero effect providing the right theme is used, despite the website stating it works on 20H2 or below. However im using LTSC 2021 which is based on 21H2, but your mileage may vary depending on which edition you use (not sure if home or pro 21H2 have any under the hood differences that might break compatibility).

 

Heres the link for windowsblinds 10, its paid software but its rather cheap and offers a 30-day trial so you can test drive it to see how it works out for you:

https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

 

Before installing that though id suggest installing Open Shell first and get that all set up, I tried installing windows blinds first and then open shell but it decided to freak out explorer requiring a restart.

Heres the Open Shell github:

GitHub - Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu: Classic Shell Reborn.

 

Below is both the windowsblinds theme file and the corresponding start menu skin, along with the settings for both.

 

Win7Like RevE Open Shell skin: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/download/file.php?id=5713&sid=d549c3cbde9b9aa4d2db7c1ed24f4f4e

Windowsblinds BetterAero7X skin: https://www.deviantart.com/fytuf/art/Better-Aero7X-875022700

 

installing the wba file is as simple as right clicking and hitting install theme, for the open shell skin you have to put that into the C:\Program Files\Open-Shell\Skins folder.

 

Heres the settings i used to achieve the glass effect, along with the windowsblind settings:

 

Once all is said and done you should end up with something like this:

 

You can leave it as this, however i wanted to go the extra mile and add some Vista specific features that i personally rather miss. So if that also interests you please read on.

 

I loved the ultimate extras that came with Vista, the games and dreamscene video wallpapers. Also the original windows games and even movie maker to some extent, old but gold i say. Heres both the link to the original microsoft games along with the Vista specific ulitmate games:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_7_games_for_windows_10.html

 

https://archive.org/details/windowsvistaultimateextras

 

And if you wish to install Movie Maker, heres the offline installer for it: https://archive.org/details/wlsetup-all_201704

 

As for dreamscene, you will need Lively Wallpaper. (I personally went with the microsoft store variant for convenience sake)

 

Lively: https://rocksdanister.github.io/lively/

 

Collection of Dreamscene videos: https://archive.org/details/windowsdreamscene.7z

 

The last modification i did to my OS was to disable the lockscreen to give that win7/vista logon feel, however normally this results in a blurred logon background which looks awful but luckily that can be disabled while also keeping transparency enabled within the system itself. Doing this and setting the lockscreen background to a vista wallpaper gives quite a nice result i think, see for yourself:

 

Turn off lockscreen blur: https://www.howtogeek.com/426554/how-to-disable-the-login-screens-background-blur-on-windows-10/

 

Heres the links to all the Windows Vista wallpapers in HD res:

 

Finally i did a short video showing what mine looks like and running a couple of the microsoft/vista games, am i the only one who missed Microsoft Tinker?

 

 

I hope this guide was helpful, and hopefully a good opener for others to show off their tweaks and customizations they might have done 😄

 

Update: For those who want a more complete vista look (like myself) heres the Vista theme along with the custom start button needed. Ive also included a link to get the sidebar and to reactivate the quick launch toolbar.

 

Vista Start menu skin:

http://www.classicshell.net/forum/download/file.php?id=3210

 

Set taskbar opacity to 25 to have it match up with the start menu skin.

 

Vista Theme:

https://www.deviantart.com/fytuf/art/BetterAeroVistaX-Version-1-0-875258248

 

Start Buttons:

https://www.deviantart.com/xreunion160/art/Vista-Orbs-for-Windows-7-333330130

 

I used 6801.bmp for that authentic vista feel.

 

8GadgetPack sidebar:

https://8gadgetpack.net/

 

How to re-add the Quick Launch toolbar:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4624-add-remove-quick-launch-toolbar-windows-10-a.html

 

Finally set the taskbar option of Combine Taskbar Buttons to Never to achieve the classic unstacked windows and use small taskbar buttons to add the finishing touch.

 

Heres how mine looks:

 

Final Update: Thanks to a chance conversation with one of the guys who made the themes (Fytuf, who tweaked and modded them from the originals) I found out that there was two settings that i hadnt configured, which you may want to enable. Both require a reboot to work correctly. the vista screenshot above has been updated to reflect the new non acrylic blur appearance.

 

 

 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Azther
Added extra items to achieve the vista effect

[Mr. Fox]

I followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. It looks great. Tomorrow I will post a screenshot. I don't have access to that computer right now, otherwise I would do it now.

 

But, anyway thanks for sharing. Ugliness is only part of what makes Windows 10 suck and this fixes that part.

[Azther]

42 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

I followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. It looks great. Tomorrow I will post a screenshot. I don't have access to that computer right now otherwise I would do it now.

 

But, anyway thanks for sharing. Ugliness is only part of what makes Windows 10 suck and this fixes that part.

Happy to help 🙂

[Mr. Fox]

Good morning!! Here is the screenshot.  HUGE aesthetic improvement for LTSC 21H2.

 

 

I still prefer LTSC 1809 with only AeroGlass and OldExplorer, but AeroGlass doesn't work on newer versions of Windoze 10.

 

[Azther]

4 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Good morning!! Here is the screenshot.  HUGE aesthetic improvement for LTSC 21H2.

 

 

I still prefer LTSC 1809 with only AeroGlass and OldExplorer, but AeroGlass doesn't work on newer versions of Windoze 10.

 

looks great 🙂 as much as i liked startisback, open shell has so much customization to it that i think it was worth the switch. I did love the old Glass8 AeroGlass for 1809 but downside to that one if i remember right was it just changed the existing win10 border so they were still squared off. a theme mod was still required to get that classic 7/vista style. Least with windowsblinds its an all in one solution which cuts down on the running processes

[Mr. Fox]

49 minutes ago, Azther said:

looks great 🙂 as much as i liked startisback, open shell has so much customization to it that i think it was worth the switch. I did love the old Glass8 AeroGlass for 1809 but downside to that one if i remember right was it just changed the existing win10 border so they were still squared off. a theme mod was still required to get that classic 7/vista style. Least with windowsblinds its an all in one solution which cuts down on the running processes

Open Shell definitely has more customization options for anyone interested in that. I lean toward the minimalist approach and I like the crystal clear smoked tint on the menu and how easy it is to exact color match the taskbar and Start menu using StartIsBack. I also prefer the square corners. I think they look better than rounded, and the round corners was an immediate turn-off for me as a Winduhz 11 first impression. That said, all other aspects of the Windows 7 GUI are superior compared to newer OSes, save for the rounded corners.

[Azther]

On 6/2/2022 at 5:31 PM, Mr. Fox said:

Open Shell definitely has more customization options for anyone interested in that. I lean toward the minimalist approach and I like the crystal clear smoked tint on the menu and how easy it is to exact color match the taskbar and Start menu using StartIsBack. I also prefer the square corners. I think they look better than rounded, and the round corners was an immediate turn-off for me as a Winduhz 11 first impression. That said, all other aspects of the Windows 7 GUI are superior compared to newer OSes, save for the rounded corners.

ah fair enough, i personally love the rounded edges. I decided to go full vista effect for the time being, i rather like how it looks with the frosted glass effect. Ive updated the guide further for those who also want this effect, quick launch and sidebar and all 🙂

 

[6730b]

Open shell + the background, brings back memories of the good times at every boot :0)

[Azther]

ive made a final update to the post, turns out Fytuf (the guy who refined both the win7 and vista themes) made me aware of two settings that further make the themes more authentic looking. Ive put them at the very bottom of the post.

[Azther]

ok now this is the final update i hope, did some tweaking to make things look more vista authentic and also changed the dreamscene software in the original post. Found a better alternative in the form of Lively Wallpaper, which not only is free and open source but supports simply dragging and dropping any video file in and away you go. It uses mpv which means for my use case (optimus laptop) i can tell it which gpu to run on.

[Mr. Fox]

Thanks for the good work here, Brother @Azther. Nice job.

 

Here is what my LTSC 2021 GUI looks like.

 

[Azther]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Thanks for the good work here, Brother @Azther. Nice job.

 

Here is what my LTSC 2021 GUI looks like.

 

very nice and clean, not used to seeing the start menu being that tall though lol. may i ask whats that overlay you have in the top right? something hwinfo related or rainmeter perhaps?

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, Azther said:

very nice and clean, not used to seeing the start menu being that tall though lol. may i ask whats that overlay you have in the top right? something hwinfo related or rainmeter perhaps?

That is an AIDA64 Sensor Panel.

 

Yes, I like having a tall start menu so I have less reason to scroll. I like being able to see more things at one time without having to scroll. I set my start menu length to be between 2/3 and 3/4 of the display height.

[Azther]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

That is an AIDA64 Sensor Panel.

 

Yes, I like having a tall start menu so I have less reason to scroll. I like being able to see more things at one time without having to scroll. I set my start menu length to be between 2/3 and 3/4 of the display height.

ah i see, and thats interesting never used AIDA64 personally, my goto has always been hwinfo and rainmeter for overlays. might have to look into it, ty

[Ashtrix]

Great work @Azther, I love Windows 7 and Vista aesthetics. I personally think that Desktop OS peaked around Windows 7 era, and the beautiful effects it has. I plan to run Windows 7 Dualbooted with Windows 10 LTSC 2019 / 1809 for the time being so Glass8+, I may look into Windowsblinds later. Aero is just king of the hill !!

 

I think only very few nowadays care about the beauty of an Operating System @Mr. Fox is one who shares that feeling, glad to see few more who love that design and style. Ever since Apple abandoned Skeuomorphic design after Steve Jobs death, entire world shifted slowly to the death of UI to now degenerate art. Also note before Apple's refinement upto iOS 6, Palm Web OS did absolutely fantastic job in perfecting it. Google's Material did something unique but now it's horrible garbage Material You which is 100% trash.

 

Peak moments of Human Machine Interfaces - Windows Vista/7, Apple iOS 6, Palm Web OS, Sony Playstation 3 XMB, Xbox 360 Blades & Android M / 6.x, I think these days will never come back, the OS is now bland boring junk with zero personality copying from here and there and zero originality and passion, no respect for Computing more for garbage News propaganda and mindnumbing social media addictions.

 

You know this same thing spread to games too, back then we had fantastic Main Menus, Options, Fonts, HUD and what not a quick memory flash from what I can remember, these games are the ones which fit in that category that take the Immersion to stratospheric levels -> BioShock, Metro 2033, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 2 & 3, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed Unity, Watch_Dogs, Batman Arkham Trilogy, God of War III, , Ninja Gaiden II, Crysis 3. Only few good games still retain the depth of the design - PREY 2017, Dishonored, DOOM 2016 (sadly they abandoned all with DOOM Eternal for mainstream appeal). Now more and more games have that same bland big boxy ugly textures and design styles worse they have that mobile UI, this mobile cancer spread to OS design and functionality and even games as well.

 

Anyways I digress, thanks and keep up the good work. Here's Wallpaper packs for Windows XP,, Vista and 7. Bonus is you get HD of these pictures, these wallpapers  bring back my memories always and the beautiful wallpapers are just serene.

  

On 3/30/2022 at 11:09 AM, Ashtrix said:

Just wanted to share this... Windows Vista and Windows 7 wallpaper pack click the first Drive link,  Windows Vista and 7 HD Wallpaper Pack 4.0.7z (195MB).  And XP HD wallpaper pack too, Windows XP HD Wallpaper Pack 4.0.7z (242MB), there's a bonus archive org page (here's the link anyways) for higher quality.

 

Beautiful timeless pictures from all old Windows XP, 7, Vista, ME, 2000, 98, enjoy !!

 

I use these only on my machine. I feel like I'm back in old times. I love the old design of Vista and Windows 7 era, everything was beautiful the glossy and nice glows it had for every small thing from highlight, hover to click. It was really a pleasant serene experience. Now all we have is some plain numb flat boring trash for design. Which is why Windows 7 will forever remain the best Windows OS ever made, that era is gone. It won't happen even in the next 10 years. Infact if you see the corporate degenerate art nowadays on Facebook, Google, Microsoft promotions esp in their apps and their home pages or user guides etc you will understand how bad things are.

 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

6 hours ago, Azther said:

ah i see, and thats interesting never used AIDA64 personally, my goto has always been hwinfo and rainmeter for overlays. might have to look into it, ty

I use HWINFO64. It is my go-to systen monitoring tool. I use AIDA64 for the Sensor Panel and benchmark tools it offers. It also has support for LCD panels like those that appeared on Logitech keyboards.

[Azther]

6 hours ago, Ashtrix said:

Great work @Azther, I love Windows 7 and Vista aesthetics. I personally think that Desktop OS peaked around Windows 7 era, and the beautiful effects it has. I plan to run Windows 7 Dualbooted with Windows 10 LTSC 2019 / 1809 for the time being so Glass8+, I may look into Windowsblinds later. Aero is just king of the hill !!

 

I think only very few nowadays care about the beauty of an Operating System @Mr. Fox is one who shares that feeling, glad to see few more who love that design and style. Ever since Apple abandoned Skeuomorphic design after Steve Jobs death, entire world shifted slowly to the death of UI to now degenerate art. Also note before Apple's refinement upto iOS 6, Palm Web OS did absolutely fantastic job in perfecting it. Google's Material did something unique but now it's horrible garbage Material You which is 100% trash.

 

Peak moments of Human Machine Interfaces - Windows Vista/7, Apple iOS 6, Palm Web OS, Sony Playstation 3 XMB, Xbox 360 Blades & Android M / 6.x, I think these days will never come back, the OS is now bland boring junk with zero personality copying from here and there and zero originality and passion, no respect for Computing more for garbage News propaganda and mindnumbing social media addictions.

 

You know this same thing spread to games too, back then we had fantastic Main Menus, Options, Fonts, HUD and what not a quick memory flash from what I can remember, these games are the ones which fit in that category that take the Immersion to stratospheric levels -> BioShock, Metro 2033, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 2 & 3, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed Unity, Watch_Dogs, Batman Arkham Trilogy, God of War III, , Ninja Gaiden II, Crysis 3. Only few good games still retain the depth of the design - PREY 2017, Dishonored, DOOM 2016 (sadly they abandoned all with DOOM Eternal for mainstream appeal). Now more and more games have that same bland big boxy ugly textures and design styles worse they have that mobile UI, this mobile cancer spread to OS design and functionality and even games as well.

 

Anyways I digress, thanks and keep up the good work. Here's Wallpaper packs for Windows XP,, Vista and 7. Bonus is you get HD of these pictures, these wallpapers  bring back my memories always and the beautiful wallpapers are just serene.

  

 

also thank you for providing more classic wallpapers 🙂 wasnt as fond of the 7 ones as i was of vista. Whats amusing is i found out recently that someone is working on an Extended Kernel for vista, to make it run modern apps that work with 7 etc. Its pretty intriguing but since i need dx12 for gaming and whatnot, the best route for me was to mod LTSC 2021 lol

[Mr. Fox]

My preferred aesthetic is only possible with older versions of Windows. Minimalist, clean... LTSC 2019 (v1809) with AeroGlass and StartisBack. Nothing else. It really sucks that Windows version upgrades are actually downgrades.

 

[Azther]

@Mr. Fox decided to test out windows 11 enterprise. windows borders aside, with StartAllBack it doesnt look too bad (at least in my opinion):

 

[Mr. Fox]

I have Windows 11 aesthetic atrocities mostly fixed using StartAllBack and OldNewExplorer. With a few minor exceptions it looks and feels like a properly mitigated version of Windows 10. The Start menu is on the left side where it belongs, the Taskbar functions correctly and the right-click context menu is no longer a terrible mess.

 

What I can't fix so far is the horrible decline in performance with Windows 11. I don't understand what the Redmond Retards are doing, but every major release of Windows from 8.X forward causes a measurable decrease in CPU performance. Windows 11 is the slowest version yet. For example, the least taxing ThrottleStop benchmark takes more than 6 seconds longer to finish because of what these idiots have done to impair CPU performance. Memory latency also worsened, which is consistent with the degradation of performance with each new major Windows release.

 

There is no reason I can identify that anyone should waste any time downgrading a system to Windows 11. While there is something to lose, there is nothing to gain. It's uglier, less efficient to navigate and slower. Nice job, Micro$lop.

[Azther]

3 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

I have Windows 11 aesthetic atrocities mostly fixed using StartAllBack and OldNewExplorer. With a few minor exceptions it looks and feels like a properly mitigated version of Windows 10. The Start menu is on the left side where it belongs, the Taskbar functions correctly and the right-click context menu is no longer a terrible mess.

 

What I can't fix so far is the horrible decline in performance with Windows 11. I don't understand what the Redmond Retards are doing, but every major release of Windows from 8.X forward causes a measurable decrease in CPU performance. Windows 11 is the slowest version yet. For example, the least taxing ThrottleStop benchmark takes more than 6 seconds longer to finish because of what these idiots have done to impair CPU performance. Memory latency also worsened, which is consistent with the degradation of performance with each new major Windows release.

 

There is no reason I can identify that anyone should waste any time downgrading a system to Windows 11. While there is something to lose, there is nothing to gain. It's uglier, less efficient to navigate and slower. Nice job, Micro$lop.

The one major flaw i had with it so far has been right after upgrading. Since 11 by default turns on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, which on my modded m18x r2 resulted in a dxgmms1.sys BSOD everytime a graphically intense app was opened (heaven for example). Aside from that, from my personal usage i havent seen too much of a difference, only time will tell tho.

[Mr. Fox]

32 minutes ago, Azther said:

The one major flaw i had with it so far has been right after upgrading. Since 11 by default turns on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, which on my modded m18x r2 resulted in a dxgmms1.sys BSOD everytime a graphically intense app was opened (heaven for example). Aside from that, from my personal usage i havent seen too much of a difference, only time will tell tho.

The best way to tell is in a multi-boot environment. That is how I effectively rake the new crap OSes over the coals and tear them a new posterior orifice. The average Joe can only offer anecdotal opinions. I can directly compare the performance of Windows 7, Windows 10 LTSC 2019, Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Windows 11 all on the same system. It makes deficiencies and defects glaringly evident and leaves no place to hide. Where CPU and memory performance are concerned, you can easily measure the decline with each new release of Windows. I don't have Windows 7 on my laptop, but I do have LTSC 2019, LTSC 2021, Windows 11 and Liux. That is where I spotted the dramatic decline in CPU performance on the laptop. I suspect the weaker the hardware is, the more evident the decline will be in terms of what you can feel in the seat of your pants. You will feel the pain of a Windows 11 downgrade more on a quad-core i7 than you will on an octa-core i9 even if the percentage of performance loss is roughly the same. 

 

 

[Azther]

56 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

The best way to tell is in a multi-boot environment. That is how I effectively rake the new crap OSes over the coals and tear them a new posterior orifice. The average Joe can only offer anecdotal opinions. I can directly compare the performance of Windows 7, Windows 10 LTSC 2019, Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Windows 11 all on the same system. It makes deficiencies and defects glaringly evident and leaves no place to hide. Where CPU and memory performance are concerned, you can easily measure the decline with each new release of Windows. I don't have Windows 7 on my laptop, but I do have LTSC 2019, LTSC 2021, Windows 11 and Liux. That is where I spotted the dramatic decline in CPU performance on the laptop. I suspect the weaker the hardware is, the more evident the decline will be in terms of what you can feel in the seat of your pants. You will feel the pain of a Windows 11 downgrade more on a quad-core i7 than you will on an octa-core i9 even if the percentage of performance loss is roughly the same. 

 

 

yeah the numbers dont lie for sure, i guess since i dont go heavy into benchmarking and mostly use my machine as a multi media/gaming machine i havent noticed too much. ideally if microsoft didnt put roadblocks in the way in regards to locking off certain games to higher versions of 10/11 i would just go back to windows 7 and have done with it. once all the games i play which have anti cheat are working with linux ill switch to that

[Mr. Fox]

Yeah, I understand that. I like gaming and it was a major focus for me for many years (limited interest in FPS only) and it ultimately contributed to birthing my fetish for overclocking high performance PCs. But, gaming is no longer something I engage in frequently enough for it to be of major importance. Most of the games I would play if I had time for that have been verified to run well on Linux. A surprisingly high number of them too, and it is probably worth noting that I generally only play AAA titles. I haven't tried any of the indie stuff on Linux since I don't buy or play indie games. I would expect similar or better results on Linux for Indie titles.

 

The last game I purchased from Micro$lop Store was Gears of War 4 and when I found myself being required to install a newer version of Windows in the middle of my single player campaign I vowed to not give those filthy dung-eating losers my money again. I don't intend to feed their pig. I am happy with the idea of it starving to death, and to that I would say "good riddance" LOL.

[Ishayin]

On 8/26/2022 at 11:06 PM, Mr. Fox said:

 I can directly compare the performance of Windows 7, Windows 10 LTSC 2019, Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Windows 11 all on the same system.

Aye aye, how can you do that and skip the only recent Windows OS that actually performs well lol? ...As we had in the Win 11 thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc2Vqe6G_AQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gZIU8QKtJo

 

😛

 

Here's my current Win 8.1 desktop:

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I've temporarily hidden my desktop items since they're overdue a tidy up! And the wallpaper changes automatically on every boot from my own selection using Wallpaper Master Pro.

 

For anyone after an open-source old-school Windows experience, ReactOS looks like an interesting project:
https://reactos.org/

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