Once upon a time, Themes were an excellent way to personalise ones desktop, from a simple wallpaper to changing the OS colour scheme and fonts, themes were a good way for one user to express themselves through the use of their desktop. The Windows 9x series of operating systems say the rise of custom themes thanks to the Plus! pack that added an easy way to add and apply a theme and gave a framework for third party themes to be created and distributed online.

Some of these themes were collected and circulated onto the CD-ROM which was sold in stores for those who didn’t have access to the internet, or just wanted an instant collection of themes to choose from. I managed to find one on the Internet Archive which was released around 2000.

The CD includes a large selection of themes that can be applied to Windows 98 and 95 (and Millenium Edition). They are sorted into folders that relate to the genre that relates to the themes (such as TV Shows, Music, Male and Female celebrities). Most of the themes are compressed into a Zip file, of which an evaluation copy of WinZip comes included.

There is also a demo utility that runs automatically when you insert (or mount) the CD which will advise on how to locate and install the themes.

The Themes

Since this CD was mastered from around 2000, many of the themes will be from media that was popular in that era:

Keeping Up Appearances: A popular BBC sitcom in the 90s, this theme required me to manly copy the .theme file into its folder, else it would apply the custom wallpaper, icons or sounds. Lines will the show will play as the alert and dialog sounds, in addition to shutdown and start sounds when you login. This one also comes with custom boot and shutdown screens, however you need to use another utility to apply them.

The X Files was one of the more popular TV shows of the 90s so it make sense an X-Files theme is included. Main issue with the theme is when you shut down the PC, as we are treated to an trance remix of the X-Files theme which goes on for 30 seconds whilst the system is waiting to shutdown. Still you at least get to hear the X-Files theme on start-up.

There is another X-Files theme which is much better in its colour scheme. Like other TV show based theme, Mulder and Scully’s lines from the TV show play whenever you minimize or open a menu, which can get annoying over time.

The Tick: This one has a nice cool blue scheme, similar to the Underwater theme that shipped with Windows 98, but has a horribly compressed background featuring various characters from the TV show ‘The Tick’

Farewell Seinfeld: Seinfeld was one of the more groundbreaking sitcoms that was popular during the 90s (although it debuted in 1989). This theme is worth it for the Seinfeld intro theme alone, that plays when you log into Windows. The desktop background is very well done and almost looks official.

Twin Peaks: Another popular TV show, this one has an interesting colour scheme and keeps the shutdown sound short. There is supposed to be  a screensaver for this theme (its mentioned in the readme file) but I was unable to locate the SCR file.

Tomb Raider 2: The Tomb Raider series of games were stupidly popular during this era, as such many desktop themes were created around the theme of Tomb Raider, and Lara Croft specifically. This one is kind of nice, it has an image of Lara riding on a  snowmobile, with an Office 97-eque WordArt of the theme’s name.

Oasis: Complete with guitar-rifts whenever you use the start menu from their popular songs.

Ozzy: Dedicated to the late great Ozzy Osbourne, Kicking off the theme is the start up theme being ‘Crazy Train’, however there are songs that play whenever a program is opened so the Windows startup sounds like a chaotic mess. The green colour scheme makes it look like an 80’s terminal which can be difficult to read. It also runs into the problem of having too long of a shutdown sound, that being ‘Mama I’m coming Home’. Oddly this theme does not contain a wallpaper, only sound and the colour scheme.

A nice simple New York theme

A tank theme, complete with sounds of a explosion every time you close an program

MTV’s Beavis and Butthead – another popular cartoon show in the 90s. An ok-ish colour scheme but the wallpaper isn’t the best quality.

Titanic – This theme borrows some sound from the Science theme, and will play that Celine Dion song when you log out, Thankfully its only around 12 seconds long instead of 35 with some of the other themes. One of the few themes that has a 1024×768 resolution wallpaper.

Johnny Bravo which was a popular Cartoon network show

Rugrats – This one a bit chaotic, like it plays the opening theme but you also hear lines from the show since they are set to play whenever a program is run, to logging onto Windows sounds like a mess. The wallpaper isn’t that good either with a bunch of low quality images from the show, along with a WordArt-looking logo.

An interesting Simpsons theme, I believe the wallpaper was off the episode ‘Mom and pop Art’ which was inspired by The Persistence of Memory. What I like is what they did for the start sound, instead of The Simpsons theme it’s a line from the episode King Size Homer where Homer looks for the ‘any’ key on his terminal.

Another Simpsons theme, this one uses icons from Virtual Springfield. One of these comes with a screensaver, but it will not function as it requires a visual basic runtime that isn’t shipped with the theme.

Utilities

A few utilities come included to help with apply the custom themes and the boot screens. As the stock version of windows 95 lacked the Desktop Themes applet (You needed the Plus!) pack for this) a few applications are provided to help apply the themes.

You can also install these for Windows 2000 to allow for easier theme support, and Windows NT 4 if you have the free resource pack installed. Desktop Architect is one such application that can be used to apply themes and to change the boot and shutdown screens.