1. Your system has to be able to use 3rd party themes, universal theme patcher works good.

2. For the explorer, explorerframe & shell32 images to get applied automatically you have to have theme resource changer installed.

3. To edit your own system files you will need restorator 2007 installed and 'take ownership' context menu addition, also for editing system files which cant be taken ownership of with the context menu addition then you will need to learn how to take ownership manually.

Everything mentioned here I will supply or give links to.