Windows 7: viewing 3rd party themes

Hello,

I downloaded a Universal Theme Patcher, patched and restarted, but still cannot view 3rd party themes.

Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Edmon

Hi ebarn
You could try following Enabling Custom Themes - Windows 7, and see if that works

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

You're welcome

I have a theme who's readme reads:

To apply completely the Dark Soft theme, you MUST replace these 4 original system files and use my files:
- explorer.exe in (by default) yourdisk:\Windows
- explorerframe.dll in (by default) yourdisk:\Windows\System32
- shell32.dll in (by default) yourdisk:\Windows\System32
- timedate.cpl in (by default) yourdisk:\Windows\System32

Is this normal and safe?

It's not normal, but it's commonly used.
You don't have to apply these though. If you decide to do so, it could risk the health of your Windows 7 Installation (bad file versions will cause Windows to (maybe) have restricted actions, or to not being able to start any application)
Therefore this is not safe and i only advise you to do it, if you know what you are doing and you are willing to take the risk.

Anyway, these files replacements are optional. The theme will still work without them, these files are just for optimization of the different part of the system (like start button, back/forwards buttons in explorer etc.)