Windows XP Color Schemes

If you’re using the standard ‘XP Style’ theme (technically known as Luna,) you only have three options for Color Schemes: Default (blue), Olive Green and Silver. If you’re not sure how to get to these options, right-click the desktop (directly onto it where no application windows are in the way,) then select the appearance tab.

The thing is, these three colours are pretty boring. I wondered if it was possible to change them by downloading additional Color Schemes from the Microsoft website or from some creative users. The answer is that it’s not that simple.

Themes are specially protected within the Windows XP file system, so it’s not easy for users to ‘tweak’ or add to them. Two companies, Stardock and TGTSoft have come out with commercial programs, WindowBlinds and StyleXP, respectively, that allow you to change the themes in XP, but if you simply want to change the Color Schemes only, without radically altering the theme Windows uses, these programs don’t offer much help.

Whilst doing a search on the Internet I came across an article from 2001 in which the author indicated that Microsoft was planning to include a number of additional Color Schemes in XP but never got around to it. That is why we only have three Color Scheme choices.

When checking out that article, I discovered a link to another website, one by ‘Kaptain Caveman.’ His website includes a description of how to add additional Color Schemes to Windows XP. After you follow the tutorial, you should now have seven additional Color Schemes for Windows XP. The latest version of the necessary UXTheme Patcher (version 6), which is mentioned in the tutorial, is available elsewhere.

Additional note: You can probably see that the images on this page are ‘out of whack’ and the text isn’t properly ’sitting’ around them. I am not sure why this is occurring, but it’s got something to do with WordPress and the way it displays things. If you know how to fix it, I’d appreciate the advice. It looks normal when viewed in the Visual editor built into WordPress so I don’t know why it isn’t displaying properly.

Update: Unfortunately, it looks as though Kaptain Caveman’s website is down.  Maybe it has used up its monthly bandwidth limit or something.  Try again some other time maybe.  I’ve changed to the links to the Google cache of each relevant page rather than leave the links broken.

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• More Windows XP Themes
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• Crimen sollicitationis

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