Windows XP Color Schemes

May 24, 2008 · Filed Under Science and Technology

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.

$The addition Color Schemes for Windows XP \'Luna\' theme.$ 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.

Update Two: You can get the Jewels Theme File from my Windows Skydrive folder.

Tags: Software, Technology

Comments

18 Responses to “Windows XP Color Schemes”

More Windows XP Themes | General Blog on June 14th, 2008 1:03 am

[...] an addition to my earlier post on Windows XP Color Schemes, I’ve found a few other themes. The first is the Windows XP Royale Noir theme. The other [...]
alluir on December 27th, 2008 11:06 am

Do you have the jewels.zip file somewhere? Can you post it here or somewhere? I’ve asked the file from Kaptain Cavemen in an email, hopefully will send me But would be still good to have it around the net in duplicates. Google cache unfortunately does not have it either
Chris on January 28th, 2009 11:06 pm

The links show a .TXT file, but if you attempt to open it, they actually call a ZIP file with everything you need.
RGK on June 7th, 2009 10:13 am

This link has the jewels files (which I uploaded from my computer):

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1QJG7NZ0
Q on August 7th, 2009 7:03 am

I got the files, but when I try to extract them it says they are password protected…do you know the password?
Jack on October 11th, 2009 3:12 am

So since the tutorial is down, once I got the jewel theme set as my theme, how do I view all of the different color schemes? (they arn’t showing up in the drop box)
guy on January 18th, 2010 6:18 am

does anyone have the tutorial? the link is obviously dead so i have the files but i can’t do nothing with ‘em ):
Tysen Woodlock on January 18th, 2010 6:07 pm

I can’t remember how to patch it because it was so long ago. Is there a Google Cache version of the website? I vaguely recall that you need to patch the file UXTheme and then copy the files to the themes folder.

If you look up “xp uxtheme patch” etc then you will probably find a website that will have all that info.
guy on January 22nd, 2010 1:37 pm

mmhmm you were absolutely right, that worked

thank you
Abr on April 5th, 2010 8:51 pm

But still I can’t get the ‘jewel’ I tried to follow the link but it useless, all the links were unavailable. so how can I get the colorful scheme? thanks
Scorp on April 9th, 2010 12:04 pm

@Abr I just figured it out myself. First you run the UXTheme Patcher. After you restart you computer you unzip the jewels zip file to it’s own directory. From there, you go into the Jewels directory and double click on “Jewels.msstyles”. You should have access to all the additional color schemes after that.
g on August 9th, 2010 1:14 pm

The ruby one looks soo screwed up. I’m thinking, why not fix it?
djmjau on September 14th, 2010 5:38 am

Thanks my friend ! , the purple one looks great.

djmjau
Anthony on December 1st, 2010 12:59 pm

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Yes I will help U on October 19th, 2011 11:53 pm

Unzip and copy here:

C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes
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Avril on December 2nd, 2011 12:44 pm

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Emery on December 3rd, 2011 9:53 am

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