So, you’ve got yourself a brand new, shiny computer. Trouble is, your whole desktop looks a little…impersonal. You’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “high time I changed this.” Trouble is, you’re not sure how to go about doing so.

Have no fear- it’s actually an incredibly simple process.

Step 1- Access the “Personalize” menu

Right click on your desktop, and click “Personalize.” This’ll open up a window that’ll let you customize pretty much everything about your user experience, save what programs you’ve installed.

Step 2- Your Theme

First things first, let’s customize your theme. You can either choose from one of the themes available, click “Get More Themes Online,” or do-it-yourself. Pretty simple stuff here- you should be able to figure most of it out yourself.  Do note that any sounds you upload need to be in .wav format. Use a program like Any Audio Converter if you find a sound you want to use but can’t.

For your background, you can select more than one image- what will then happen is that the system will switch between the images after a set interval. Pretty hand, isn’t it? You can either fit your image to the desktop at its default size, center it, stretch it, have it appear as a series of tiles, or have it fill the desktop (which will repeat the image as many times as necessary to completely fill your background.)

Step 3: Desktop Icons

Next up, you’ll be customizing your desktop icons. Note that whatever image you use will need to be of the .ico file type, and will be re-sized to 32×32 pixels. I’ll be posting a tutorial later detailing how to change images into icons, if you so desire.

Step 4: Mouse Cursor

Again, you’re going to need to have a specialized filetype for your cursor (.ani or .cur). CNET’s a decent place to browse around- always be wary when downloading new cursor files, as some of them tend to be hosted on websites that are…less than legitimate.

Step 5: Account Picture

Last, but not least, your account picture- this’ll display on the log-in screen. Nothing all that special here- just choose something that you feel represents you.

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