This is not an attack against Teknix or his project (nor was it made because his transformation pack is more popular than mine). He has done incredible things, and it is insane what he has accomplished with Revert8Plus. I even suggest helping him financially if you can here.

But despite the incredible work put into it, Revert8Plus has caused problems for developers and its users.

the growing issues

Revert8Plus V4 was never finished software (build 1137 is the last build that was marked as the 'latest', while the rest were marked as 'pre-release'), and with that, certain features were left unfinished or broken (e.g. logon screen issues, display settings refusing to launch, or the 'Custom' button in the installer not working due to not being finished in time for the deadline).

This is a pretty small issue, right? Not quite. With unfinished software, you have buggy code, and the buggy code in question (Registry Redirect) would cause things to break for the user (Firefox forks being the main focus). Those same users would blame those forks instead of Revert8Plus due to the mentality that "transformation Packs only modify how Windows looks, so it must be the fork's fault."

use old tweaking software, lose your OS!

"B-but... it works fine on my machine!™"

The fact that you can get a working install at all is impressive. Why so? Well, Revert8Plus's last update was in February 2025, when the latest versions of OpenGlass & Legacy were 1.3 and 1.4 (for clarification, as of writing this, the OpenGlass Standard repo was archived, and Legacy is at version 2.4.1.2083).

A lot has changed since then, mainly Microsoft altering how some things are handled inside DWM. With this, ALTaleX531 had to make an announcement about dropping support for 24H2 for the time being and fixing it later. Revert8Plus users were not aware of this, which left many of them playing a game of luck with DWM and whether they could use their PC or not.

And, of course, this issue is still present to this day on the latest Revert8Plus build as of me writing this blog article.

With each passing month, the number of issues increases thanks to monthly updates changing how things work internally, while the tools used in Revert8Plus become older and more outdated by the day.

...the solution?

Sadly, there is no perfect solution if you want something that does everything for you automatically and claims to survive updates (not even my 21H2to7 Transformation Pack is immune to Microsoft screwing things up).

But luckily, the "do it yourself" method always exists, and if you don't care about having your OS slightly inaccurate (which if you were using Revert8Plus, you didn't care about that), you could get what Revert8Plus offered and more!

so how do I DIY my own 10/11to7?

As making a guide to create a complete 10to7 or 11to7 would get outdated pretty quickly, I'm only going to give the basic advice on getting a basic *to7 running.

To start, you need the following software, which Revert8Plus uses most of:

• Windhawk by Ramen Software
• OpenGlass by ALTaleX531
• SecureUxTheme by namazso
• Aero10 (Recommended for Windows 10 users) by vaporvance
• Aero11 (Recommended for Windows 11 users, however works on Windows 10) by SandTechStuff
• StartIsBack++ / StartAllBack / explorer7 (for the Windows 7 taskbar/start menu look and feel)

If you only want the glass look of Windows 7 but not the frames or the rest, you can just download and install OpenGlass and use this registry file for a glassy Aero-like title bar (Note: it will import items in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the registry).

If you wanna go crazy with it, you could install Windhawk and the Accent Color Sync mod to have more color customization.

But if you want to go further, you would need to install SecureUxTheme or any other alternative, as Microsoft does not allow you to use third-party themes by default.

After you've installed SecureUxTheme, you need to copy the Aero10/11 theme into %systemroot%\Resources\Themes and then run the .theme file, which will greet you with a weird Windows 7 look. This can be fixed by adding the DWORD "CaptionButtons" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm and setting the value to 2. If you want everything done, you can import this registry file (Note: it will import items in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the registry). After logging out and back in, your system will look almost like Windows 7

Windhawk

This section is going to be a list of mods required for a basic Windows 7 skin:

• Aerexplorer by Aubymori (Note: Windows 11 users have to use a fork of the mod made for Windows 11, which can be found here, and 21332's ExplorerFrame.dll for the mod to work correctly)
• Resource Redirect by m417z (with the Pane7 Icon Pack that can be found in the mod's settings)
• Accent Color Sync by CatmanFan / Mr._Lechkar
• Eradicate Context Menus by Aubymori (Note: this won't remove the Windows 11 context menus. You need to apply the tweak to remove them yourself)
• Legacy File Copy by rounk-ctrl
• Fix Basic Caption Text by Aubymori
• Windows 7/8.x Alt+Tab Loader by Aubymori (Note: you also need Windows 7's AltTab.dll)

Registry Tweaks

You need to perform some changes to the registry to get a good looking 7 skin (Note: before applying these tweaks, make a backup of those locations, otherwise you won't be able to revert back some of these changes):

• OpenGlass tweaks (Already applied)
• WindowMetrics (Borders, titlebar and button sizes)
• System Sounds (Note: Not all sounds will be present by default on 11. So you have to replace the %systemroot%\Media folder with this one)
• Colors (Windows 7 colors, both normal and desktop colors)

Extras

Here are some extras that can be applied to your install:

• Windows 7 Cursors
• Aero pointer shadow which can be enabled in main.cpl > Pointers > "Enable pointer shadow".
• Restoring Control Panel Pages/Links
• Windows 7 Colors in the Windows 7 Personalization page (Note: this will require themecpl7.dll inside System32)
• You can find even more tweaks on sites like WinClassic and other similar forum pages.

conclusions

In conclusion, software like Revert8Plus or 21H2to7, no matter how great they can be, will always carry the risk of damaging your OS. This risk arises when Microsoft inevitably updates one of the core components in Windows, potentially causing the tweaking tools to suddenly break. In the case of Revert8Plus, this has already happened, and since Teknix is currently focused on V5, this flaw will only get fixed when V5 is released.

In the other hand, doing things yourself might seem difficult, but once you get it set up, it becomes easier and provides more customization options, including custom themes, custom icons, and much more, as shown in these examples:

My setup (Using a customized Aero8 theme)

PatrickTBP's setup (Using the Uniko10 theme)

PatrickTBP's 10toVista setup

Deporitazz's 10toXP setup

the beginnings

Ever since I was a little kid I've been particularly interested in game consoles. Growing up I only had a pretty low end desktop PC so the idea of games that were only available on other platforms was quite enigmatic.

Around 2016 I discovered that some console games can in fact be played on Windows. Back then I was really into Sonic games so I'd play around with a Sega Genesis emulator called Fusion and run different community-made mods of Sonic Games (called ROM hacks). Many of them were of very high quality, with user-created levels, characters, sometimes even entire stories, which provided me with hours of fun.

The first question that came into my mind was, "how did they manage to make an entire console work on a Windows computer?". The idea that someone managed to make games for an entirely different device run on my ordinary PC seemed completely alien to me.

I wasn't far from the truth because, to the average person, emulation may as well be magic. It is very difficult as it requires deep knowledge of the original hardware and hundreds of hours of reverse engineering. Even for a console seemingly as simple as the Genesis, the developers had to study the original firmware and emulate the entire Motorola CPU, Yamaha sound chip and the rest of the components which, needless to say, requires a lot of programming skill.

PS2 emulation with PCSX2

As I grew older my interest in other devices deepened, and so I tried emulating PlayStation 2 games out of curiosity. Even though my CPU wasn't quite powerful enough to run the PS2 version of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, I was impressed at just how different it was from the PC version I played as a kid. The PS2 version was the first game to be developed by EA BlackBox, notorious and cherished for the staples of the series such as Underground, Most Wanted and Carbon, so many players would agree that it is the superior way to play it, given it has nicer graphics, car models and better opponent and police AI.

The software that made this possible is an emulator called PCSX2, the developers of which have made collosal progress in the last few years. Last time I played NFS Hot Pursuit 2, it still had some noticeable bugs that have all been fixed by now. It let me play other PlayStation 2 exclusives, such as Gran Turismo 4 and Burnout 3: Takedown which became some of my favorite racing games.

A huge part of what makes emulation so great is that it lets you play your favorite console games with modern enhancements, such as higher resolutions, widescreen and 60FPS patches, even online play for games that were originally splitscreen. It also enables software and hardware preservation as retro consoles get scarce and extremely overpriced, and disc games are subject to decay and become difficult to obtain. Unfortunately, some companies such as Nintendo fight emulation and game preservation with all their force while shamelessly using it for their own products (notably the NES Classic Edition) and not providing an alternative way to play their delisted games. This makes things difficult for gamers who simply want to enjoy their childhood titles.

PS3 emulation with RPCS3

Delving into Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 and realizing just how interesting the game is, especially with the aspect of collecting historical cars that aren't quite available in arcade racers like Need for Speed, I quickly became infatuated with the series and wanted to try the later titles. While GT4 is considered the best game in the series, I was curious about the graphics and gameplay enhancements offered by the sheer computing power of the PlayStation 3.

That was when I realized 7th generation console emulation is still not quite perfect. While many games are perfectly playable, most will have notable bugs and imperfections, and the processing power required to emulate the PS3 makes it not so accessible to everybody. Nevertheless I enjoyed playing Gran Turismo 5 and liked it so much that I even bought a real PS3 to play GT6 which doesn't run too well in the emulator. I was pretty happy with my purchase as there are many upsides to owning a modded PS3.

PC emulation with 86Box

While console emulation in itself is amazing, what completely blew my mind was the ability to emulate PC's from the 80's and 90's, starting with the original IBM PC and ending with the Pentium II. Being a huge retro Windows nerd, that made me incredibly curious and so I tried out 86Box by installing Windows 98SE in an emulated Pentium 166 MHz box with a 3dfx Voodoo II and a Sound Blaster AWE32.

Continuing with the idea of software and hardware preservation, 86Box allows you to run ancient software designed for Windows 9x and DOS that simply doesn't run on modern Windows anymore and saves you the hassle of having to dig up an old breaking down Pentium III CPU, motherboard, RAM, IDE hard drive, graphics card and all the other stuff required to run an old OS. While virtual machine software like VMware does run Windows 9x, it does so without graphics capability and you may sometimes run into CPU speed issues. Meanwhile, 86Box emulates an entire era-appropriate PC, allowing old games and specific software to run properly.

Even more amazingly, 86Box is not limited to just Windows, because it emulates the hardware, not the software. One of my greatest feats was managing to install the latest version of Gentoo Linux on a Pentium 166 MHz, complete with networking, sound and a graphical interface. This is possible thanks to the fact that Gentoo is a source distribution, which means you have to compile all the code manually for your machine. This took many nights of configuring and falling asleep to my PC's fans going full speed, but I think the end result was well worth it.

conclusions

In conclusion, emulation is truly an amazing feat that should not be taken for granted. While it can be used for playing games that you don't legally own, it is an extremely important part of preserving software and hardware history, that would be greatly affected without it. We encourage you to only emulate devices and games that you own and dump your own firmware should the emulator require it. And of course, if you enjoyed the software, make sure to support the developers with a coffee. There are many projects that haven't been mentioned in this post, such as the Wii and GameCube emulator Dolphin, and QEMU which allows you to emulate many different PC architectures including ARM. There are also many other awesome projects, so be sure to check them out.