Anybody who has ever tried to change the theme in Windows will already know that you have to hack the uxtheme file in order to install themes into XP that aren’t digitally signed by Microsoft. If you would rather not or are unable to patch your system you might be interested in these unofficial themes created by Microsoft.
There might be other themes out there, but these are the ones I know about. Feel free to inform everybody in the comments if you know of any others.
Royale
This theme is really bright and blue… Just look at all that blue…
To install this theme you’ll need to download, extract the zipfile, and then run the installer. When prompted for the location to save the files, leave it set to default.
Now you can go into your display settings and change the theme from the list.
Download Royale Theme from Softpedia
Royale Noir
This theme was supposed to be a darker version of the regular Royale theme, but it wasn’t really finished before somebody from Microsoft published it, and it spread all over the web.
After downloading and extracting the zipfile, you’ll need to copy the royale_noir folder into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes and then double-click on the Luna.msstyles file found in that directory and change the settings to match the above screenshot.
Download Royale Noir theme from istartedsomething.com
Zune Theme
This theme was released to celebrate the Zune launch, and you’ll notice it’s very similar to Royale Noir, except for the kinda ugly orange start button. Long time readers will note that we’ve mentioned this theme before.
Installing this theme is really simple… download and run the installer.
Download Zune Theme from Microsoft.com
WinSCP is by far and away the best SCP/SFTP client for Windows users, but the default settings don’t use keepalive, so you get disconnected far too often. I like to leave the client open while I’m doing work, and this causes a serious problem with my workflow.
My good friend Tim asked me the other day: “How do I take a screenshot of an entire web page… am I supposed to just piece two images together?” Thankfully for Tim he has a geek friend to explain a simple way to accomplish this.
Usually the people listed in your Contacts list are regarded as safe by Outlook’s Junk E-mail Filter. Usually being the key word. I ran into an instance today where an interoffice email sent went into the recipients Junk Folder. To correct this I used the following steps.
If you haven’t heard of StumbleUpon you are probably still a very productive person. If you want to make your time-wasting sessions slightly more efficient, you can use the keyboard to stumble instead of clicking the Stumble! button.
Hidden away in the Windows directory is a separate utility that can be used to perform certain user administration functions not provided in the normal interface. Instead of typing “control userpasswords2” into the run box, you can just add it as an icon in your Control Panel.
This is a quick tip to speed up the start menu in Vista. I wrote a previous article about helping the user interface more snappy. This tip concentrates on the start menu but will have a similar effect. So if you employ both strategies the UI will run more smoothly. This tip requires a registry
If you use Outlook to store all of your contacts, you can also use it to quickly find maps and directions for your contacts by using the quick access Map button.
If you find yourself using the Group Policy Editor all the time, you might have wondered why it doesn’t show up in the Control Panel along with all the other tools. After many hours of registry hacking, I’ve come up with a registry tweak to let you do just that.
This article was written by MysticGeek, a tech blogger at the How-To Geek Blogs.
If you’re like most PC users you have thousands of files all over your computer in different directories. When it comes time to do maintenance on your PC and clean up some of those files you probably don’t remember what is what. In fact I know myself that I will download a bunch of utility
