Skinning your Windows Explorer background

How to display your own images in Windows Explorer for XP & Vista

Published on January 17, 2008 By VistArtXPosed In Skinning

With a typical installation of Windows (regardless of what version is installed), the Windows Explorer background is white. HOW BORING!!! With a little experimentation with Skinstudio 6, I found out that you could use any Bitmap or PNG file to fill your Windows Explorer background. Don't believe me? Click on the link at the bottom of the article, then you will believe me. I also skinned the left & top navigation bars and filled it with seperate images. To effectively fill the entire explorer background without tiling, use an image that's at least the size of your screen (i.e. if you use 1280x1024, use a 1280x1024 sized image, etc.[preferably a light-colored wallpaper]). Just make sure that you can still read the links to your folders and files, or this will just get in the way. This works well for both Windows XP & Vista. Enjoy!!!

Comments (Page 2)

Frankief

on Jul 28, 2008

Windowpaper Xp will do this for any folder and you can have a different picture for each folder. It is free and clean, if you would like to try it here is the link:WWW Link

kyosan1988

on Jul 28, 2008

Thank you Frankief but it only change folder, not explorer background.

Frankief

on Jul 29, 2008

Okay, so you lost me! What are you referring to as explorer background. It changes the backgound of the folders to any picture you like and I can only assume that is what explorer backgrounds are as that is what Windowblinds changes when you enable explorer backgounds!

timalan

on Jan 10, 2009

where is that link at VistArtXPosed?

cos i don't see alink at the bottom of your article...

Thanks alot

timalan

Lantec

on Jan 11, 2009

"External Link" at top of post

pmulcahy11b

on Nov 21, 2009

Explorer skinning in WB has never worked for me on two different computers, one running Windows XP and one Vista. I had been using Skin Studio 6 to skin my explorer backgrounds, but after I installed WB 7 on my Vista machine, even Skin Studio is unable to apply explorer backgrounds, and of course, WB can't skin my explorer backgrounds either.

Here's the text on the "About Window Blinds" tab.

Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 3.7
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 3.7

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 7.0 (build 230 x86 - Vista Edition)

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC
WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC
(Acer V223W ) 1 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
(ACER X223W ) 2 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Wblind.dll         2009/11/16 11:43:20
Wbsrv.dll         2009/11/12 08:19:07
SevenConfig.exe         2009/11/12 10:16:53
Wbload.exe         2009/11/06 11:44:12
Wbhelp.dll         2009/03/24 15:04:07
Tray.dll              2009/10/21 08:13:19
Wbload.dll              2009/09/25 07:41:28
Screen.exe         2009/11/07 11:39:26

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