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We purchased a new laptop for our 73 year old father who was just getting used to Win XP. He has asked if there is any way to make the interface look and work like XP? So my question is: is there any way to make the interface look and work like XP?
Brian
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
If you want that same classic mode (the gray toolbars and such), that does exist in Windows 7. Just right-click your desktop, choose Personalize, then scroll down and click "Windows Classic".
If this solves your issue, click the 'Propose as Answer' link below, and vote as helpful by clicking the green triangle to the lelft. Thanks!
For the most part it already does, because it was built from Windows XP. For example, all windows still have the familiar _ and X buttons to minimize and close them. You can also change the taskbar to show the words rather than just icons, or make other changes as you need. While there's no "XP button", changes like this can get close.
If you are simply wanting the visual style to look like XP without changing any function, you can use a skinning program such as WindowBlinds by StarDock.
If this solves your issue, click the 'Propose as Answer' link below, and vote as helpful by clicking the green triangle to the lelft. Thanks!
There is a whole cottage industry developing to provide hacks and utilities to make Win 7 work and look like XP
Get classic shell (open source, sourceforge), it will make the taskbar, explorer and the start button work like XP.
Go online to how to geek and there are all sorts of tutorials to change the desktop, file manager, folders etc. to look and work like XP.
Go to thoosje (?) these people have a utility that will allow you to change the boot and login screens to look like XP and much more, you can have almost any look you want.
You can get the alt tab functionality back, you can get the "up" button back and many other things, you just have to rummage around on the Internet using creative queries to unearth the changes you want.
I guess there are many users that don't like the new GUI, I can understand why they just want to get their work done and all this re-modeling is getting in the way of the work.
I hope this helps, yes there is a way to get what you want even though Microsoft has made it hard. I am also looking into using autohotkey (a free scripting utility) to add other things. But, programming and scripting may not be your thing.
Same problem here only my dad's 87! I know that in Windows XP we can go into the Control Panel/Display/Appearance and go to the "Windows and buttons:" dropdown menu and select WINDOWS CLASSIC to change the appearance from Windows XP to Classic. There must be some way to do the same thing in Windows 7 to change it to appear like XP. Does anybody know? It is sooooo simple in XP, why would they leave this choice out of 7? Joyce
Thanks Shawn. I think the visual appearance looking like XP will make him happy. I really appreciate the help!!!!
Brian
