How to completely replace XP fonts with Vista fonts
11 April, 2008
Are you tired of the same old XP look? Want to have the vista font look but don’t want to switch the OS? Well here is a good solution for you. First of all you need to do several things before you do this.
Prequisites
- You should be using a LCD screen because these new fonts will be Clear-Type
- A Backup of your registry.
- A System Restore Point (to be on the safe side)
- Download and Install Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer
Here is how to change the fonts
- Download Movefile from Microsoft
- Download the SansSerif Killer Script from PC-World (Just click on the Zum Download link to download)
- This script comes with a self-extracting archive, extract it and open it up on a text editor like Notepad ++ as this script changes all the default fonts with “corbel” if you don’t like corbel change it to a different name but the naming shold be as it is (Microsoft standard names). This also adds the font Consolas for the Command Propt which is another Vista font. You can choose it in the Properties of the command line.
- Put the two files which came with Movefile into the windows folder (C:\Windows), and run the script (Powerpoint Viewer 2007 should be already installed), it wull take a second or two, and will ask you to restart.
- New fonts will be clearly visible after the Reboot.
Categories :
Hacks
Sounds promising. :woot: So is this different from the Display Properties -> Appearance -> Advanced?
on April 11, 2008
@ KsbjA:
yeah definitely this is a full replacement, that one only changes the fonts in desktop and some other places, but this methods makes it look like vista fonts but with XP gui
on April 11, 2008
ehm… ^_^ and if i wanna rollback this process? how to get back the “old” look? :whistle:
on April 12, 2008
Just change the default font in the script to your xp default font and run it again and reboot.
on April 12, 2008
Is there a way to reduce the font size? I mean, the fonts are so large, that my Start menu is half of the screen on 1208×1024, all message boxes are two times bigger… it all definitely looks sweet :love: , but it’s hard to get used to such sizes on the highest available resolution… :straight:
on April 12, 2008
@ Ksbja:
try changing this and reboot, open regedit and goto
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current\Software\Fonts
and change the LogPixels Value (Try changing it to 96 decimal or 00000060 hex, this is the value my Vista Ultimate uses, and I am running on 1280*1024 res)
on April 12, 2008
Thanks, much better now!
on April 12, 2008
whoops xD , the method i mentioned above need not be that difficult, thats same as changing the dpi of your fonts in display properties –> settings –> advanced –> font size :woot:
on April 12, 2008
Oh. Hehe.
Anyways, now I have it exported as a regkey and I will compile everything into one single exe 
on April 12, 2008
Great tip, thanks! Along with that semi-official leaked Black Royale Noir theme it makes for a welcome change of XP’s look.
The only niggle: XP’s password-character (the filled circle that mask your actual character input) has turned into the unknown-character symbol (the little rectangle with a question mark inside). No big deal though.
on September 4, 2008
ummm, what zum donwload?
on February 7, 2009