re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' Friday, July 1, 2005 at 6:36 pm Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum Posted by random9q (1 messages posted) >THEY ARE ALL! bundled with spyware and they tell you that they are to keep costs >down for them but to gum up your investment instead. I had similar experiences with themexp.org, but like a lot of _annoyances_, there's a way around many of them. A good many of the "wrappers" that they include (installer programs which eventually give you the files you wanted plus the "advertising" you didn't ask for) are relatively transparent to the two zip utilities I have had experience with: WinZip and PowerArchiver. (Most people swear by WinZip, but I prefer PowerArchiver by a good margin as at the time I registered my copy it supported a few more formates -- YMMV.) Just right-click on the installer and choose "Extract to folder " (where is the name of the file). You MIGHT have to pick through the resulting output to find what you're looking for, but it may be out in the open. Note that if what's output includes a few ".cab" files, you might have to right-click on and extract those as well. Once you have the files you WANT, copy them elsewhere and delete the folder you created with the original extraction and everything in it. If there was spyware or adware amongst the pile (or even just unwanted junk), you just side-stepped it. NOTE: themexp.org is really just a relatively big ad-site for a program by the name of "StyleXP", an alternative to the theme manager that ships with WinXP Plus!Pack. I actually liked it enough to pay the registration fee for it, but find the program itself exhibits frequent flaky behavior in the actual UI. But it was at least an expedient way to get rid of the windows logo and the word "START" on the start menu, which I got pretty sick of. It's a bit of a shame that the site to host submitted customizations to go with that program became such a tarpit for adware and its ilk. Written in response to: re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (MIRROR: Sunday, June 5, 2005 at 1:07 pm) There are presently no replies to this message. All messages in this thread [show all] Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (Thyrus: Sun, Jan 20, 2002, 5:18 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (LozerBaby: Sun, Jan 20, 2002, 5:26 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (Thyrus: Mon, Jan 21, 2002, 5:01 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (Soren: Sat, May 31, 2003, 3:18 am) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (MIRROR: Sun, Jun 5, 2005, 1:07 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (random9q: Fri, Jul 1, 2005, 6:36 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (Tareq M. Badreddin: Sun, Apr 21, 2002, 9:13 pm) re: Question about 'Replace the Ugly Startup and Shutdown Screens' (Saptarshi Purkayastha: Thu, Nov 28, 2002, 11:30 pm) Reply or follow-up to this message Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum