Vista Tutorial - Hepl With Aero

I have been trying to change my folder color scheme for weeks now and enable Aero at the same time but every time I change the desktop colors I get a crappy boxy windows 2000 look to the desk top.I go in to performance panel and can get the rounded corners back by clicking custom options but when I try to enable Aero the whole color scheme changes back the the way it was before.

I have tried to download Themes but the still give me the boxy 2K look.. I have also experimented with several software programs to change with no avail. Luckily I have a Ghost back up so I can restore my computer when I mess it up.I have looked on the net and most of the sites just mention enabling Aero but like I said when I do that it just changes the whole scheme back to the way it was.. I don't want to buy something for $50 from star-dock or run something that will tack resources away from the computer while running just to change the stupid colors...Any suggestion -Links or Ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks
My computer specs as followed.

Windows Vista Ultimate 64 Bit


DelL-----------XPS 710 H2C Water cooled
CPU------------Intel Core 2 Quad CPU @ 3.2GHz
Chipset--------nVidia nForce 590
Graphics-------Dual nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Memory--------4096 MB
Dual------------DVD TSSTcorp DVD+/- R/RW DL
Sound Card-----Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
Hard Drives1--- Mirror @ 465 GB/1 Raid 5 @ 298 GB
Montors--------2 Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP-HC 24"1920x1200
Mouse----------G5 Laser Mouse
Logitech KB-----G15 Gaming Keyboard

I tried to work with 1gb but it's just not enough. aero was using 68% of my RAM, now with 2 gig it uses 41%. so my suggestion is, get 2gb, you will need it in the future anyway