So after a bit of searching around I was able to use custom themes for Windows Vista. Here is what you need to do it yourself. There is a awesome tutorial on how to do everything manually over at the GuiMods forum, but who wants to do all that. All you got to do is download VistaGlazz and click the first icon to patch your dll files.

Once the patch is done you will need to restart (to reload the files into aero).

After the restart clear some space on your hard drive to download some visual styles. You are going to be looking for .msstyles files. Once you download the file you will want to copy them over to your WindowsResourcesThemes folder and double click on them. Your “Appearance Settings” window will open and you can apply the newly installed theme and you are done. Give a few a try to find the one you like best.

Here are a couple of links to find some new themes:

Gui Modes Vista Visual Styles
DiviantART Vista Styles
AeroXperience
Neowin Forums
joejoe.org

Oh, and lets not forget about your vista sidebar. How-to Geek found some great software to apply custom themes to that too. Download the Windows Sidebar Styler and install it. I would tell you how to use the program but you can just head over to the How-to Geek for that.

BTW I am currently using Curved Sidebar and Ezlo Thin Style.

*EDIT* Just to let everyone know. It appears that with Vista SP1 RC1 build 6001 this doesn’t work anymore. The SP1 installer replaces the hacked dll’s and Vista Glazz shows that the dll’s are corrupt now. It may work if I hack them again but I need to test SP1 a bit more before I do that. I will keep this post updated with what I find.

*EDIT* I want to keep this up to date.  If you have Vista SP1 you will need to download the new UxTheme patches that Vista SP1 requires.  I uploaded the 32 bit version here.  If you need x64 or Windows server patches you can head over to where I got them. You can also patch the files the easy way with Vista Visual Master from vista123. Vista Visual Master lets you do a whole lot more than just patch your UxTheme files but you can read about all that over at their site.

*EDIT* I heard that the guy that actually made Vista Glazz worked with someone to make a new/easier tool for custom themes. I think it works with Windows Vista and Windows 7 but I haven’t tried it myself. I just wanted to keep everyone updated on what I found. The new site is called UxStyle. Let me know if you try it and find it useful.