welcome to a little dumb guide for something because i decided to try it out, realized it’s not that bad, and want to share my methods. turning windows 11 into something sorta like windows 7.
this guide just needs patience mainly, nothing here should be too difficult, just a bit time consuming.
a few notes
this was only tested on the latest current version of windows 11 pro, 24H2, as a 64-bit operating system. compatibility with older versions, any version of windows 10, or other system architectures have not been tested by me, and i’d recommend not attempting either unless you know what you’re doing. (especially for arm, i’m pretty sure like one or two applications here will break if attempted on arm windows.)
i consider this guide “half-assed” because this honestly does the job “good enough” to get it looking like windows 7, and honestly, on the surface, does look exactly like windows 7, but the more you poke at it, the more the skin kinda reveals itself. it’s possible to get way better, even 1-to-1 results of a transformation like this, but this is more of a “doing things manually because you don’t trust transformation packs or perhaps dealing with the whole “messing around with system files” type of thing” guide as i’m trying my best to use utilities that aren’t trying going to make your windows install explode after an update or something and at worst will just disable themselves to prevent things from breaking.
i am not responsible if anything breaks on your system
i am simply sharing my methods of getting this to work. you as the reader has chosen to follow this, before you actually start doing anything here, consider if you want to begin and please understand the risks that come with this. damage can be prevented if you ensure you’ve taken the necessary steps to save yourself.
things this guide doesn’t consider
icons
i personally haven’t been able to find a decent, modern method of getting windows 7 icons without finding some really old applications that haven’t been touched or some utility that screams “Malware” or a utility that requires payment. i’ll continue to look around, but for now, windows 11 icons are what we’re stuck with.
fonts(?)
i’ll just be using the windows 11 fonts here. i won’t bother to replace or use the windows 7 fonts on the UI or anything, i just simply don’t really care about that.
applications
i don’t see a reason to install the windows 7 applications, so i’m not going to. there a lot of methods to getting windows 7 applications on the latest version of windows, like this one, if you prefer that.
preparation
before we actually begin with anything,
- change your color mode
- in the Settings app, under Personalization > Colors, choose “Custom” for “Change your mode”
- set Windows mode to Dark
- set app mode to Light
- in the Settings app, under Personalization > Colors, choose “Custom” for “Change your mode”
- ensure you don’t already have any applications installed that may conflict with our setup, examples include Open-Shell, ExplorerPatcher, OldNewExplorer and such.
- i may in the future look into using these instead of using the paid / free-trial alternatives that are used in this guide.
it’s worth noting that i am not trying to go for the “Stock Windows 7” look here, this setup is intended to be compatible with your current customizations (such as your own cursors, colors, sounds etc.)
stage zero: system restore
make a system restore point before continuing on. otherwise if something goes wrong, you’re fucked. just search up “Create a restore point” and open the result that comes up, click “Create” near the bottom of the new window that pops up and follow the instructions.
stage one installations & configurations
Sounds
completely optional, but if you’d like, you can grab the windows 7 sounds uploaded onto the internet archive as a zip file on the right side and extract them.
open C:\Windows\Media in another window/tab, and from the folder you’ve just extracted, copy all of the folders inside of it straight into the Media folder. write into the existing folders (they have nothing in them, anyways).
make a new folder inside of the Media folder, call it Windows 7 for conveniences sake, and copy all of the audio files inside of the extracted folder into the new Windows 7 folder we just made.
sadly, setting sounds are manual and there doesn’t seem to be a way of easily automating setup, but we can use this list provided by konsti to apply the sounds appropriately.
open up “Sound settings” by searching for it, which should land you in the Settings app. scroll down until you find More sound settings near the bottom, which should open up the control panel version of the sounds settings. click the Sounds tab at the top of that window, click on a sound in the “Program Events” list, click the Browse... button, and navigate into the folder of whichever sound scheme you like to choose under C:\Windows\Media. use the following list to set the correct sounds:
| sound | file name |
|---|---|
| Asterisk | Windows Error.wav |
| Critical Battery Alarm | Windows Battery Critical.wav |
| Critical Stop | Windows Critical Stop.wav |
| Default Beep | Windows Ding.wav |
| Device Connect | Windows Hardware Insert.wav |
| Device Disconnect | Windows Hardware Remove.wav |
| Device Failed to Connect | Windows Hardware Fail.wav |
| Exclamation | Windows Exclamation.wav |
| Low Battery Alarm | Windows Battery Low.wav |
| Message Nudge | Windows Balloon.wav |
| New Mail Notification | Windows Notify.wav |
| New Text Message Notification | Windows Balloon.wav |
| Notification | Windows Balloon.wav |
| Print Complete | Windows Print Complete.wav |
| Program Error | Windows Critical Stop.wav |
| Question | Windows Exclamation.wav |
| System Notification | Windows Ding.wav |
| Windows User Account Control | Windows User Account Control.wav |
| Blocked Pop-up Window | Windows Pop-up Blocked.wav |
| Empty Recycle Bin | Windows Recycle.wav |
| Notification Bar | Windows Pop-up Blocked.wav |
| Start Navigation | Windows Navigation Start.wav |
any sound not mentioned or left unmodified should be ignored.
once done, click Save As... near the top and save it with the name as the sound scheme you have chosen, then click Apply to set the sounds.
Cursors
also entirely optional, if you’d like the windows 7 cursors, you may download them here with the zip option on the right, and extract them. go into the extracted folder, into Windows 7, right click the Install.inf file and click Install in the context menu. search for “Change how the mouse pointer looks when it’s moving” in your start menu, and open the result that should appear, go into the Pointers tab on the top of the window, and choose Windows 7 in the list, ensure Enable pointer shadow is enabled and click Apply.
Aero7-11
this is the theme itself that will give us the windows 7 look and feel on the actual applications themselves. this must be applied after we finish stage one of our installations and configurations, so for now, just download the latest release and keep it in your Downloads folder.
DWMBlurGlass
we’ll actually start things off with DWMBlurGlass. this is the utility that will give us the blur and transparency behind windows and emulate the aero glass feeling.
first, head off into their releases and grab the latest x64 zip. extract the zip, go inside of it and rename the Release folder to something more friendly, like DWMBlurGlass, then go ahead and move it into the root of the C: drive.
now open C:\DWMBlurGlass\DWMBlurGlass.exe, a new window with settings and such should appear. click on the Symbol tab at the top of the screen, and click the Download button. once it’s finished, go back to the General tab and click the Install button at the top of the window. below that should be Effect Settings, go ahead and toggle on Enable Aero reflection effect, Restore Win7 style titlebar button size and Enable Win7 style titlebar button glow. click the little floppy disk next to the minimize / close button on the top right of the window to save and apply your settings.
you may also go into the Advanced tab at the top of the window and enable Use Accent color to override color settings RGB to use your windows accent color settings as the titlebar colors instead of having to manually mess around with the accent color settings (although the latter may give better results in most cases.)
if everything is applied correctly, all of your windows should have proper aero transparency! excuse the weird button controls on the windows, as its required for the theme to look as close as possible to actual windows 7.
StartAllBack
this application is going to do all of heavy lifting for us in terms of the start menu and taskbar. go ahead and download it from it their site and install it. it’s worth noting that it’s a free trial, with 100 days remaining. if you Know How To Use A Search Engine And Regedit you can easily reset the trial if you must, although the application is just $5 and is pretty good, so if you want to support the developer, that’s another route.
once installed, explorer should restart and the taskbar may look different. right click the taskbar and click “Properties” at the bottom of the context menu. a new window should appear with the StartAllBack settings and take you to its “Welcome” tab. just select Remastered 7 on this screen and it’ll give us a pretty good setup similar to windows 7, including all of little details like the volume and calendar widgets.
you may poke around with the other settings to your liking, but this is all we have to do here.
Windhawk
this is basically a “Mod Manager”, if you will, for windows. it includes other things if you’d like to browser its mods and tinker with it, but we’re just going to need it for one thing related to getting the proper border style back on windows. download it from the website and install it. we’ll come back to this one later as well.
SecureUxTheme
this is the application required for actually applying the theme. download its latest release (amd64 if x64, the other options if you’re attempting this on another architecture) and extract the folder. rename the folder to something more friendly, like SecureUxTheme and move it to the root of the C: drive, just like DWMBlurGlass.
now’s the point to save everything you have open and close them, open up C:\SecureUxTheme\ThemeTool.exe as administrator, agree to the warning that pops up, and click Install on the right side of the window, within the “Installation” group. when it’s done, reboot your system. this is required.
stage two: properly theme it
once rebooted, we can now continue to finish theming it.
Aero7-11
go back to where you’ve stored the Aero7-11 archive and extract it. inside of the folder(s, may or may not be double foldered) should be multiple folders and readme text files.
go into the “1 - Theme” folder, copy all of the contents inside of that folder (which should consist of multiple .theme files and 2 folders) straight into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes. once that’s done:
SecureUxTheme
go and run C:\SecureUxTheme\ThemeTool.exe as administrator as from earlier, accept the warning, and choose Aero 7-11 Square in the list. below the list, feel free to toggle on Ignore background, Ignore cursor, Ignore color and Ignore sound to save the customization that we’ve made / you’d like to keep. click on the Apply button next to the options to apply the theme. and your windows should start to look a lot more like windows 7 now! there’s just one more step.
Windhawk
go back into the Aero7-11 folder, and go into the “2 - Borders” folder and inside of that, go into the “Windhawk Mod” folder.
open up Windhawk itself, and click the Settings button in the top right, click on Advanced settings near the bottom, scroll down and click on More advanced settings once more. in the new window that appears, scroll down and find “Process inclusion list” and add dwm.exe into the list, then click Save and restart Windhawk.
once Windhawk restarts and opens itself up, click the Create a New Mod button on the bottom right, if a popup appears, click on Begin coding or anything similar to that. in the new coding window, delete all of the default contents. go back into the Aero7-11 folder, open the “Mod.wh.cpp” file in something like notepad, and copy all of the contents inside of that file into the Windhawk coding window. click Compile Mod on the left and let it finish. when it’s done, click Exit Editing Mode and it should be enabled! if not, enable it.
and that’s it! windows should mostly be looking like windows 7 now, with some minor issues and strange things here and there, but its mostly windows 7!
minor “Issues”
window buttons / DWMBlurGlass
the window buttons may be touching right against the corner / edge of the window, which looks Bad. it’s possible to “Fix” this by going back into the DWMBlurGlass settings and disabling Restore Win7 style titlebar button size, although then you’ll end up with inaccurate looking buttons, so it’s a “Pick your poison” type of deal here
okay, that’s it
i don’t have any closing words or anything here, i hope you enjoy the windows 7 theme i guess. i’ll update this if there’s anything new or anything that needs to be fixed. feel free to contact me via whatever is on my site.