Help Importing/Upgrading Windows 7 Themes to Windows 8

[own3mall]

Hi All,

I'm trying to get a few existing Windows 7 themes to work in Windows 8.1.  However, I'm not having any luck.  Importing them following these instructions in the latest beta of Windows Style Builder did not work for me:

1. Open WSB and click Open then Import a Windows 7 theme
2. Save the file to where ever you want
3. Click Open again and load the theme you just saved
4. You can now save and test your theme properly

I imported the theme, saved it, and then tried it on my Windows 8.1 machine.  It doesn't work.  I'm using Windows Style Builder on my Windows 7 machine.  Does that matter?  

The two Windows 7 themes I'm trying to get working in Windows 8 are:

• Luna
   
• Royale

They can both be downloaded here:

http://winxp4life.tk

I'm not the author of those themes, but there are a lot of people that would like to see them working on Windows 8.1 including myself.  They work great on Windows 7, but they don't do anything on Windows 8.

Is there any documentation somewhere that maps out the resource IDs and which ID is responsible for which image?  I would try doing this myself manually using resource hacker if I knew which ID did what.  Should I just start with the Windows 8 default msstyle in WSB and import all of the icons from the old theme over to the new one based on the breakdown of image categories WSB provides?

Any help is appreciated.  I'm new to actually trying to upgrade / make themes.

[Mr GRiM]

You can not test a Windows 8 theme nor import a windows 7 theme if you using WSB on Windows 7, you need to be running WSB on Windows 8

[3am]

Seeing you are on 8.1 and using the latest Beta I'd recommend making a copy of 8.1 Aero msstyles and shellstyle, rename it, put them in a theme folder, move it to resources/themes and then start importing everything you can from your 7 theme manually. It's the best and safest way to go. 8.1 msstyles is very different from 7 msstyles.

[Mr GRiM]

Seeing you are on 8.1 and using the latest Beta I'd recommend making a copy of 8.1 Aero msstyles and shellstyle, rename it, put them in a theme folder, move it to resources/themes and then start importing everything you can from your 7 theme manually. It's the best and safest way to go. 8.1 msstyles is very different from 7 msstyles.

Yeah he has Windows 8.1 but he is trying to update the themes for 8.1 on Windows 7 as he mentioned and that is what his problem will be, your right though, still better to do a manual update in some cases, although I had it work pretty well with a few of my themes.

I imported the theme, saved it, and then tried it on my Windows 8.1 machine.  It doesn't work.  I'm using Windows Style Builder on my Windows 7 machine.  Does that matter?

[Panda X]

Yeah importing only works when in Windows 8 because WSB needs to get the AMAP resource from 8's MSStyles. Otherwise it would technically work.

[own3mall]

Thanks.  The Windows 7 theme conversion did work properly when running WSB in Windows 8.

WSB is an excellent utility!  Very powerful.  Thank you so much for your work on it!