Royale Theme in graphite on X60s?

[coolsilicon]

I've read that on the X60s you have a variety of the so called "Royale" theme. It's supposed to offer four different color schemes, among which one has a graphite colored taskbar. So far, I couldn't find this theme for download. Anybody here who can confirm the existence of that theme?

[KristianJ]

I only ever thought Royale came in the one shade (see an old pic of my desktop at http://img96.imageshack.us/my.php?image=royale2bg.jpg as an example). If it is available in other shades nowadays then I'm interested as well

[christopher_wolf]

Royale is quite nice, although it has only one msstyle available by default, which is the XP/MCE blue. Now, you could use something like WindowsBlinds or StyleXP to fiddle with it and get that "graphite" or jet black Thinkpad look to it. Or you could get some of these themes, here or here. The first is bascially the Royale style and theme with a black color to it.

If you choose to do the latter, you will need to get and use the UXTheme patcher; however, take note that it has some issues on OEM Windows XP preloads and will get annoyed once it sees the i386 folder under the C: root. Earlier versions, as opposed to the 5.0 version of uxtheme patcher, will not check for that and go right on ahead and patch away. Now, *make a backup of uxtheme.dll*, this cannot be stressed enough. There have been reports of the GUI going to the 9th level of hell in a wicker handbasket once the patching gets over with on some systems; the only way to get around this if it happens is to restore the original uxtheme.dll and/or a system restore.


Although I do recommend you get either WindowBlinds, and the whole suite if you want, or StyleXP if you want to tweak the GUI and shell even more. The special FX that are optional may or may not slow down your system; if, however, you just stick to modifying the basics of the shell that Windows and Explorer are expecting and use you can actually *save* system resources whilst looking better.

Then again, there is always the old school way of manually patching the uxtheme.dll or msstyle in a hex editor, which I would recommend if you still can't get it working with the automatic patcher. Which is all this theme/style/GUI modding really is, ResHacker or XVI32 would be good choices for this, but be prepared to set aside some time if you want to do it this way; even as a last resort. This is why it is easier with programs dedicated to changing it for the end-user, such as WindowBlinds and StyleXP. Done well, you can, indeed, save resources and have a more efficient, and better looking, desktop.

I didn't try such style modding on the X60 I tried out, although I didn't see anything that should get in the way of it as far as the OEM preload of Windows XP on it goes. IT should be much the same for the X60s unless IBM/Lenovo went nuts and started adding extra GUI modules to it themselves, which I really doubt they did too much of except for some shell integration for the CSS and security subsystem...maybe for the rest of ThinkVantage too.

HTH

[coolsilicon]

Christopher, you did a hell of a job in explaining what could be done if one was vernturesome enough, but NO, NO, NO! I just want that simple theme without any dippy fiddlings I already have reshacker somewhere on my hd, but so far I can resist.

[beeblebrox]

Christopher, you did a hell of a job in explaining what could be done if one was vernturesome enough, but NO, NO, NO! I just want that simple theme without any dippy fiddlings I already have reshacker somewhere on my hd, but so far I can resist.

A much easier way than described above is to just google for "Royale Noir" theme which is the second original Microsoft theme, which was never released, but was found on Microsoft's New Zealand website. The common Royale is the blue mediacenter style.

I use Royale Noir sometimes, it is similar to Windows Vista, same effects, black and graphite.
No mods necessary, original Microsoft.

[Kyocera]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=32492

Gator has posted a really great theme here, it is now running on my two T's.

I just googled it as suggested above and it is the same theme that gator posted in the link above, very cool theme, should have been included in the windows themes, definately better than the gross olive green color.