windows vista skins

Mostly what I've seen are small 3rd party apps that render the orb a layer above the taskbar, and link to the start menu when clicked upon. Blaero Start Orb is the best of these. Simply add it to your startup, and you have an orb

You'll need one of the "cut off" orb themes in question, and also to line up Blaero with the partial orb in the taskbar of that theme. To do this: Make sure Blaero was the last thing you clicked, and use Shift+arrow keys to move it, pixel by pixel, to where you want it. (Don't worry, it will remember its last position from then on).

Others use WindowBlinds, (a commercial theming software), to accomplish this. However, it costs money, and seems a bit drastic for the single purpose you intend.

I don't know if anyone has found a way to patch the system files necessary to make a "full orb" theme in XP. Further, with Service Pack 3 on the horizon, I'm loathe to patch too many system files, fearing that any updates to patched files will (at best) un-do my changes, or (at worst) corrupt the update and nuke my Windows.

Eventually, I myself settled for a customized variation of Inspirat, getting the slightly smaller full ball in exchange for not having to use another startup item.

Good luck!