Complete Tutorial: Customize Windows 7 UI to make it look like Windows 8 UI

One of the hottest buzz on the Internet today is about the upcoming Microsoft operating system, Windows 8 or Windows Next or the Codename ;Mother Vienna. There have been lot of freeware released recently, that enable you to experience the new features of Windows 8 on your Windows 7. In this article I’ll tell you how to customize Windows 7 to look like Windows 8 UI, which Microsoft show-cased recently.

Step 1:
Patch system files to Enable Custom Themes. Follow this article to patch them.

Step 2:
Download Zetro VS 1.3 from Deviantart and extract the files to a folder.

Go to Theme folder > Zetro bottom taskbar > and copy Zetro and Zetro.theme and paste them to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes folder.

Step 4: 
Right click on Desktop and click on Personalize.

You’ll find Zetro under the “Installed Themes” section select the theme. Now your theme should be changed to resemble the Windows 8 theme.

Step 5:

Now that we have applied the Windows 8 theme, we need to bring the Metro UI design to the Desktop. We are going to use a software called “RainMeter” and “Omnimo 4” RainMeter Skin.

Download RainMeter.

Download Omnimo 4.

Step 6:

First install RainMeter, once RainMeter is installed then we need install Omnimo 4. Extract Omnimo 4 to a folder. Once you have extracted  the files double-click Setup.rmskin to install the skin.

Step 7:
Once it’s installed you’ll get a Welcome screen as show in the below picture.

Go with the default values and click the Next arrow. Then you’ll be prompted to select the language.

Select the language and you’ll next be prompted to select your screen resolution.

Select the screen resolution and you’re done. It will apply the new Metro UI to your Desktop.

Step 8:

The last step would be to change the Start button. You can find them under \Zetro pack by Pisa\Extras\Windows 7 Start Orb Changer folder of your theme that you extracted. You could use our Start Button Changer application to change the Start Orb. You can use this button:

Once you have made all those changes, reboot the system once to let the complete effects take place. Now your desktop would look similar to this image.

Additional tweaks:
(1) You could download Windows 8 boot screen the from Deviantart. You could use Win7BootUpdater to change the Boot screen.

(2) Windows Media Player patch (Zune like) for Deviantart

Also you could install Zune Player to get a feel of it from Zune’s Website.  You might need to refer KB2443618.

(3) Download and use the Windows 8 Clock Logon Screensaver for Windows 7 from here.

(4) A Windows 8 like taskbar user tile for Windows 7 here. This User Tile pulls your entire online persona into one place, and includes things like your Facebook and Windows Live Messenger statuses, Twitter, Email, etc. Go get it here.

Well now your Windows 7 UI will almost resemble the Windows 8 UI, as we know today.
If you have any additional tweaks or apps, please do share with us.
It is always a good idea to create a system restore point first before making any changes to your Windows.