Back Alley Tech Tip

I recently stumbled upon Microsofts' new desktop theme. It's called Energy Blue and I have to say, it's really awesome. Here's what it looks like on my pc.

Pretty sharp looking huh, it's almost like the default blue, but just a bit better in my opinion. The thing is, this theme is made for PC's running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, so in order to get it working it requires a bit of hacking. Luckily, I'm a pretty nice guy and I've written a little guide to help you, my dear friends, install this wonderful theme. You're going to need WinZip or WinRar</a or some other type of third party unzipping utility installed on you computer. Ready? Ok.

1. First, you will want to start off by downloading the theme

2. Right click the file you downloaded and choose the option that will allow you to extract the files to your desktop.

3. Place the file called 'royale.theme' in your 'C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes' folder

4. Make a directory in 'C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes' and call it 'Royale'

5. Now put all the remaining files from the archive in 'C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Royale'

6. Right click on the desktop and click on the 'Appearance' tab, click on the drop down box that's titled 'Windows and buttons and choose 'Windows XP style'. If you have more then one list for 'Windows XP style', try the first one. Then, click on the 'Color scheme' drop down box and choose Royale. You're done my friend.

A very simple hack that has some, I think, pretty awesome results. Now, if Royale doesn't appear in the 'Color scheme' drop down box, and you have more then one instance of 'Windows XP style' in the 'Windows and buttons' drop down, just simply choose the other option in the list. It should show up. If it doesn't then you should try the whole process again.

The whole process should take 10 minutes tops and is very straight forward.

Hope you enjoy this, I sure did.