Umm, well as far as I know your supposed to use a program, style xp would be the best to change xp themes.
I used to have some Windows skin thing but it was really slowing and annoying, don't get a skin for XP, get Vista.
I was looking around themes, and I found a nice, simple and sleek one, details on which you can find Here
just swap your uxtheme file then use anything from DA, uses more or less the EXACT SAME degree of resources as the default XP theme.
Agreed.. The easiest way is to download the transformation pack. It uses the same amount of resources as XP themes. The other way is to download the UXtheme Multi-patcher (http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml) and then download the theme/msvisualstyle and apply it.
I did this for a bit but found on my not so amazing laptop it slowed it down. All I did was typed vista themes in google and it comes up with loads of results. Hope this helped.
ok simple way i did this and it worked well http://www.windowsxlive.net/index.php?page_id=15 http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=23824 very easy to use and loadsa screenshots there
I'd rather change my XP to imitate Linux than Vista. Then again, Linux is so easily and incredibly adjustable it'd be impossible to find a style that is recognizable straight of as a Linux Distro.