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How can I save and load a new Microsoft Plus! desktop theme in Windows XP?

A. XP's desktop themes feature lets you customize icons, desktop wallpaper, colors, mouse pointers, visual style, and sounds. If you've created your own theme, you can save it to a .theme file by performing the following steps:

  1. Start the Control Panel Desktop applet (go to Start, Control Panel, then click Display).
  2. Select the Themes tab, then click Save As.
  3. Enter a name for your theme (by default, XP will save the theme in the My Documents folder but you can specify another location), then click Save.

XP will create a file with a .theme extension that you can back up or send to another machine.

To load a theme, perform the following steps:

  1. Start the Control Panel Desktop applet (go to Start, Control Panel, then click Display).
  2. Select the Themes tab.
  3. From the the Theme drop-down menu, click Browse.
  4. Navigate to the location of your theme, select the .theme file, then click Open.

Be aware that a .theme file contains only the name of your background picture, not the picture itself. Therefore, if you have a custom graphic and you haven't backed it up or copied it to another computer to the same location as your .theme file, XP will ignore the background picture setting when you try to load the theme. You can use a text editor to modify a .theme file.

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