WAYS TO PERSONALISE COMPUTER

There’s a lot you can do to change the way your personal copy of Windows looks. From backgrounds to screensavers, even the sounds that error messages make can be customized. Leave behind the standard theme, and follow this guide to make Windows yours!

1

Understand themes. Themes are packages of icons, wallpapers, fonts, screensavers, and sounds that make up the Windows user interface. You can change the entire theme at once to dramatically change the way your computer looks and feels.

• Most installations of Windows only come with one or two themes installed, but many more can be downloaded from the internet.

2

Change the theme. Open your Personalization tool in the Control Panel. For Windows 7 and 8, the theme selection window takes up the majority of the Personalization tool. You can browse through the installed themes and pick one that you’d like. If you want to search online for more, click the “Get more themes online…” link.

• For Windows Vista, theme selection is a bit less user-friendly. In the Personalization menu, click the Theme link. This will open the Theme menu, where you can select installed themes from a drop-down box. In order to add more themes, you will need to manually search for them and download them to your computer. They use the file extension “.theme”.

Changing Your Wallpaper

1

Get a new wallpaper image. Windows gives you a few options if you want to change your desktop image, but if you want a truly personalized wallpaper, then you’ll need to find or make one. First, you’ll need to know what size image you’ll be downloading.

• Open up your Display utility. In Windows XP, 7, and 8, open the Control Panel and then open Display. In Windows Vista, open the Control Panel, open Personalization, then click Display Settings at the Bottom.

 

2

Make a note of your desktop size. For the best looking desktop image, you’ll want one that matches the size of your desktop. This will keep it from stretching or repeating. Look for the slider in the Display window that lists how many pixels the desktop is made of. For example, it might say “1920 by 1080 pixels”. This means that your monitor is displaying an image 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels in height.

3

Download an image. Use popular image search engines to find a new picture for your desktop. Open the Search Tools, click Size, and then select Exact. Enter in the size of your desktop to only search for images that size. Once you find an image you like, save it to your computer. 

 

4

Set the wallpaper. Open up the Personalization tool in the Control Panel. This could be listed in the Appearance and Personalization category, depending on how your Control Panel is set up. From here, open the Desktop Background option. Click Browse… to search your computer for the image you downloaded.

• If you didn’t download an image the same size as your desktop, you have the options to stretch it, tile it, or leave it with black borders.

 

Changing the Screen Saver

1

Open the Personalization menu. This can be found in the Control Panel, under Appearances and Personalization. Navigate to the Screen Saver option. This will open your Screen Saver Settings.

2

Change the screen saver. Use the dropdown menu to choose from a selection of installed screensavers.

3

Change screen saver settings. You can adjust how long until the screensaver appears, and whether or not you want it to lock the computer. Depending on the screensaver you choose, you may be able to adjust settings for it by click the Settings… button. 

 

4

Download new screen savers. To install a new screen saver, you need to download one from the internet. Screen savers use the .scr format. Be sure to download screen savers only from trusted sources, because screen saver files are executable files and can be used for virus distribution. 

• To install a downloaded screensaver, simply right click on the .scr file and select Install from the menu.

 

 Thanks for reading.Hope ot helps!