Tutorial: Windows Vista Ribbons Screensaver

Have you ever went to look at the screensavers in Windows Vista and been extremely disappointed like I was? Well, at first thought the best fix would be "Oh well, I'll just search Google for a new screensaver!". Sadly, Microsoft decided to take that little bit of freedom that you had in Windows XP. Sounds like something our dear friend Bill Gates would do.

Luckily, there's a fix for it! A combination of a tiny amount of courage with the Windows Registry Editor and the will to take five minutes to memorize some numbers, your screensavers will look infinitely better.

With this tutorial I'll cover only the Ribbons screensaver, but the same general hacks can be applied with any saver from Vista. This tutorial is all over the internet, but I've seen a lot that don't really explain it all that well; and for people with limited knowledge and courage, that can be quite foreboding.


<sub>Before.


After.</sub>

Go ahead and go to your desktop, open the start menu. In the search bar at the bottom, type in "Regedit" and hit enter.


_{New search tool actually works in the latest version of Windows.}

Now, once you have the Registry Editor open, find the software tab, and click it to open the drop down tabs. Skim through these to find Microsoft, and then Windows. Click on Current Version, and find the Screensavers tab near the bottom. Open it, and find the Ribbons tab. Once you find it, don't click the Screen 1 and Screen 2 tabs. You won't be needing those in this tutorial.


_{So many choices! It's the sixteenth tab under Current Version.}

This is where the fun starts. First, go to Edit (in the menu bar) and hover over New, and then click DWORD. This will simply bring up a new item in the screen. You can't name it just anything, however. Name it "Numribbons", without the quotes. Once you're finished with that, right click on Numribbons, and click "Modify". Once a pop up shows, click the "Decimal" orb under Hexadecimal. Typing in this increases, or if you want it to, decreases the amount of ribbons. Set it anywhere between 1 and 100. I like mine to be set at 100 just because I think it looks really cool.


<sub>The Windows 7 registry is pretty much the same as Windows Vista.


Ohhh! You hacker!</sub>

Repeat the process of creating the DWORD twice. Name the two new ones Blur and Ribbonwidth. It's relatively obvious what Ribbonwidth does: it determines the width of the ribbons. I set mine at 50 for a cool effect. Blur defines the amount the ribbons blur into one another (E.G. If you set this to 0, the ribbons simply pile on top of one another until the screen turns white.)


_{You can always delete the new DWORD files to reset the saver to it's default look.}

Now that you've finished everything, simply close the Registry Editor to save it and preview it by right clicking on your desktop and clicking personalization and clicking the Screensaver button.

Everything in this guide is easily reversible if you don't like the changes; and they're all completely editable.

I am not responsible for any mistakes you make, or damage done to you're computer.

Thanks for reading this tutorial! Don't hesitate to comment and follow if you liked it!

Note:I might do some on the other screensavers once I get around to messing with them. I am also completely aware that this is all over Google; but no one has pointed out that this registry hack works perfectly in Windows 7 Beta. Most lack screenshots and make it far more complicated than it really is.