Mass Effect Custom Windows Theme

mass-effect-rainmeter
Fight for the lost.

The Complete Mass Effect Theme for Windows 7 and the Blue Mass Effect UI for Windows 10 | 8 | 7 with a sharper, cleaner visual style for windows 7 that all fans should love. Has lots of cool interfaces.

Mass Effect: As you might know, Mass Effect is nearing an end and what better way to live it up than a  complete Mass Effect theme right on your desktop. Filled with great wallpapers, fresh icons and even a rainmeter skin.

What to expect: This theme will change the way your desktop looks. It’ll have a new visual style, new Mass Effect icons and cursor set. There will also be a Mass Effect rainmeter skin to add the interface from the game.

mass-effect-rainmeter-2

Click to enlarge. A cleaner, cooler Mass Effect look.

A Word of Caution: This method is fairly simple, takes about 15-30 minutes to set up and can be considered high-level desktop customization. However it is advised you follow my instructions exactly and backup any file that you may have to modify.

The 2 things to do: This tutorial consists of: 1. Changing your visual style to Windows 8 style. And 2. Bringing the Mass Effect interface through a rainmeter skin.

I – WINDOWS 8 VISUAL STYLE (Skip this if you only want the panels)

To Download: Assume we are about to assemble different parts of a rig and each part needs to be added separately. First thing you need to do is download all these small files listed below and store them all in a new folder. Do not run any of the files! Simply download them and store them seperately for now.

Instructions: Follow these instructions in order and be sure you know what you’re doing at each level. If you have any doubts, drop a comment below.

1. To use any 3rd party visual style, your system must be patched first. This needs to be done only once. So if you are already have some visual styles running in your system, skip this step. If not, run the UxStyle file you downloaded and complete the setup. 

2. Open the ‘windows_8_vs_for_win7‘ rar file you downloaded and extract the 2 contents of the ‘Theme for Windows 7’ folder (‘AeroNoRedCloseButton’ folder and ‘aeroNoRedCloseButton.theme’ file) in the following path: “C:WindowsResourcesThemes“. 

3. Right click the ‘Windows7 Start Orb Changer.exe’ program you downloaded and choose ‘Run as Administrator‘ and choose change orb option. Select any one of the bmp files from the ‘MassEffectStartOrbs‘ rar file that you downloaded. 

4. Run the ‘MassEffect3ThemeRaider.themepack‘ file that you downloaded.

This should give you modified explorer windows, new wallpaper, new icons, cursor set and start orb.

II – MASS EFFECT UI

Now, we are going to take care of the blue Mass Effect UI panels. You are going to download the ultimate desktop customization tool called, Rainmeter. Then, you are going to add the panels by using a rainmeter skin.

To Download: You need to download 2 things.

1. Run the rainmeter setup and complete the installation.

2. Once setup is completed, run the rainmeter program. You’ll have the default rainmeter skin, showing up in your desktop.

3. Now, run the ‘mass_effect_rainmeter_skin_by_rickf7666-d4h0vgi.rmskin’ file that is for new users and choose ‘Install‘. 

4. After installing, you can right click on any skin and go to ‘Rainmeter Menu->Configs->Mass Effect‘ to select/deselect a skin.

5. You can move the panels around by simply clicking and dragging. Or right click and choose ‘Close Skin‘ to close that panel.

6. Right click a skin and choose ‘Edit Skin‘ to open a notepad that you can alter and save as you wish.

7. If you are new to rainmeter, it is strongly suggested you read this guide.

And thats it. A custom made Mass Effect desktop made by yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back!

You can configure the panels anyway you wish.

Credits: Total props to fediaFedia for making the cool visual style and RickF7666 for making the  rainmeter skin

Reset to default: Choosing the default Aero theme will reset the visual style to default. Right click on any panel and choose ‘Exit’ from ‘Rainmeter Menu’ to close Rainmeter. Open the ‘Windows7 Start Orb Changer’ and choose ‘Default’ to reset start orb.

Hope you liked this theme. If you have any questions, suggestions, likes or comments, drop them below.

Thank you for trying the free Mass Effect Custom Theme for Windows 10 | 8 | 7.

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149 COMMENTS

  2. Raider, I couldn`t win with the Alieware them.. Dont know why! Windows7 Start Orb changer, in WINrar, if i right click on the file I have no option to “Run as administrator”?? Where are you based??

  3. I just want to hear quick, what is the media player that is used? Because it is not picking up my WinAmp?

    Btw it is a really cool theme! 🙂

  7. after installing rainmeter and doing all the following steps i m having mass efffect skin but my desktop icons are not going …plz tell me what to do bcoz this is really an amazing theme..

  8. Hey Themeraider done everything but the launcher wheel on the ui is bugging me a little i have oppened the edit text file and am trying to link my network icon to one of the button but no matter whether i put what i think is the CLSID is in it still doesnt work is there anything else i can type to get the button to link to network

  10. in step 3 you say to run ‘mass_effect_rainmeter_skin_by_rickf7666-d4h0vgi.rmskin’ where abouts is this located.? I cant seem to find any file of that title in the download..

  11. hi everything worked perfect but i was wondering how do u change the wether location to like some other place ?

  12. AWWWWW !!!!!!

    Wait for it……………………

    wait for it………………………

    SOME !!!!!!!!!

    YO THESE THEMES O YOS DOPE GOT A Laptop desktop and workstation they all look phenominal all thanks to u!!!!!

  13. Hi Theme raider! I gotta say I just love this theme! But I have some questions.
    1: Is there any way to change from farenheit to celcius on the CPU skin?
    2: Is is possible to change the launcher skins directions? ex when I press “downloads” it sends me to “/user/downloads”, but I would like to change it to “(whatever, in this case a portable HDD/downloads) and how do you do that?
    3: can you change the text style on the clock skin?

    Again, awesome skin! And thank you for your time!

    • For all 3 questions, right click on required skin and choose ‘edit skin’.

      This’ll open up a notepad where you’ll find the required parameter to be edited.

      Example: In case of the launcher, the notepad will have the location as ‘user/downloads’, simply change it to whatever you wish.

  17. when i select the mass effect 3 theme before using rain meter it changes into high contrast mode and looks all screwed up so have skipped that step, also how to you change the location for weather and the temps from F to C, thanks

  25. Would you please explain how to edit the launcher buttons in a clear and concise step-by-step way to eliminate any confusion. I can’t seem to find where in the txt I am supposed to change what the buttons say and how to change it to a different folder/program. I love the skin, I just need to personalise it a little so I can feel content.

  26. Hi.. I’m web developer….Thank you so much for your OUTSTANDING theme =) I will blast your website for my gratitude to you=)

  28. *This should give you modified explorer windows, new wallpaper, new icons, cursor set and start orb.*
    It only gives me new icons…and it looks like windows 98/95 or something like that.
    halp

  29. is there anyway I can do without the third party crap. Because there really not that needed for my machine even more, I treat third party junk as internet threat.

    • Go to your Winrar( or whatever program) right click, and select “Run as Administrator”. When it opens, use only that window or instance of Winrar to do the extraction.

  39. So I try to run the UxStyle.rar and I get the message that my computer doesn’t know what to run. Being the noob that I am I have absolutely no idea what to do. I assume I need some kind of program that runs .rar files but I don’t know where to find one.

  42. When I try to run the Mass Effect Theme I get a pop-up saying there’s an unspecified error and the theme won’t run… but everything else is running quite smoothly (and I’m loving it all! Thank you!)… sorry to bother, but is there anything I can do?

  43. modified explorer windows, new wallpaper, new icons, cursor set and start orb.
    none of this worked it went to the grey tool bar

  44. I am having trouble getting custom cursors with the theme. I have everything completed and tried using the theme again and still no go. My system is 64bit if that makes a difference.

  45. How do you change the destination of launcher? I have two Hdds and i want the downloads, music and documents to go to the second one. How would I do this? Thanks

  46. Hey um i notice the Weather skin doesn’t have a current temp

    all it has is a °F sideways and no temp. I was looking into the WeatherForecast+Radar.ini but there was no apparent fix (Im a nub I know :/)

    if anyone knows what line to edit that would be great…

    ALSO! for anyone trying to change the temps from °F to °C keep in mind that your temps may be in Celcius already all you need to do is open the .ini file with notepad++ and replace all the °F’s with °C ^__^

  47. I’m having a hard time modifying the media player, and the disk drive monitor. I want to add additional drives to the monitor, instead of just two. I am also trying to have the media player work with Windows Media Player, or even possibly Pandora internet radio(maybe it could do it?), but I cannot find the media player path within the settings, or the application script.

  48. 1How do I get this button to open up google chrome, What am i doing wrong?
    2How do i get this to open my personal music folder rather than the default?

    • if you dont already have the answer then all you have to do is manually input 🙂
      Example: C:Program Files (x86)GoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe
      the ( chrome.exe ) is the manual input this works for everything else such as media player and what not 😀

  49. Hi, awesome work you did, congrats. Although it doesn’t want to display the current weather and its also in Fahrenheit, but I need it for celsius. Thanks

  52. Hey! First off awesome skin!
    Ok so i know how to change the names of the middle thing and what not but is it possible to get one of the tabs to launch League of Legends? So i click it and it launches?
    Cheers

  54. when i click on ‘Computer’ or any other button on the Mass effect theme Launcher the following appears; “C:Program FilesAdobeAcrobat 10.0Acrobat ElementsContextmenu.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Try installing the program again using the original installation media or contact your system administrator or the software vendor for support.” I have no idea why this is popping up. Could anyone help me out?

  55. Hey Theme Raider, nice pack! One question if anyone knows how to help with, how do you change the launcher so that you can open up applications? I have been able to alter it so that locations of applications (specifically Steam) can open, but I don’t seem able to get it so that on a click the application will run. Is this even possible?

  56. hey thank you for the great instructions! i was wandering if you could give a little more guidence on how to link applications to the launcher

  57. xD stuck on first part. when i extract those two files in the vs folder it gets like 12 errors and wont extract there. please help?

  63. Does anyone know where I can find the rotating earth wallpaper? It was on reddit a yesterday but now I can’t find that post that included this link and the link for the planet that rotates.

  64. IM having a problem with the start button, it choose the one i want and it dosent change, and when i open the application up again its back to the normal orb. Can u help ??

  65. have problems with adjusting the weatherand radar. have all set to my location, but my right now temperatur isnt working..
    does someone know who to fix??

  66. I have the same problem like Monkeyhupf. There is no “right now” temperature shown and the Postfix (°C in my case) is rotated by 90 degrees. Can you tell me how to fix it?
    For everyone who has problems with changing the temperature from fahrenheit tu celsius: right click on the skin which you want to edit -> choose edit skin -> search the document for “scale” -> change the “F”s to “C”s -> search the document for “postfix” -> change the “F”s to “C”s -> done 🙂

  71. Hey I’m having a problem.I did everything but when I open the themepack the taskbar and the start button orb change to old style Windows 98 taskbar.Why does this happen?

  73. Ok, so I accidentally clicked another theme by mistake and when I went back to the ME3 theme it keeps going to the Windows basic theme. I tried re-installing it but it keeps going back to the grey basic style. What’s happened? How do I fix this?

  75. You must patch your system. If you do not patch your system correctly then you will be sent to that. I know as it happened to me once before I knew what I was doing. Run the UxStyle or find the windows universal Patcher and you are set.

  76. Firstly awesome layout and simple instructions even a noob like myself managed to get almost everything sorted out issue free i just need some help on the finishing touches in good old laymen or even bright pictures with lines on… try as i might and believe me i have i cant change the radar and weather no matter what i paste or to where :S and also i can not find the cursor pack anywhere which is truthfully one of the things i was most interested in any hep would be really appreciated

  77. Thank you very much for this and all the instructions, I love it! Just wondering if there’s any way to change the clock to a 24-hour format.
    If not, I’ll survive. :p

  78. Hello, I am using a application called “lightshot” it takes instant screen shots and uploads it. Ever since installing this awesome background and rainmeter i can no longer use it. Would you please explain how to regain the use of this application?

  80. Hey, great skin. Loving it so far. Just had one issue, not sure how to fix. I can’t seem to get the start button part to work. Any help??

  82. not sure if this is still alive, i did everything great and great everything, but im new to coding how and where do i rename one of the buttons on the launcher, thanks a bunch

  83. So everything’s working just fine, But when I ran the themeraider, it didn’t go to a Mass Effect Theme. It just went to a default grey bar. It DID change the wallpaper though. Nothing else. Any help?

  89. did the downloads but you 4got to say about all the bubble dock shite that gets downloaded with it took me any hour to clean the computer of the crap you knob

  90. The Windows Start Button Changer link bounces back with the following, Gateway Anti-Virus Alert

    This request is blocked by the Firewall Gateway Anti-Virus Service. Name: (Cloud Id: 23030309) Delf.I (Trojan)

    Now, I’m certain this is my antivirus kicking in, but i figured you might want to know just in case a file in the download pack is corrupted. It doesn’t do this for any of the other links.

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