Royale Vista

Changing the looks of the operating system is one of the most common activities that even less experienced users can take up. The abundance of wallpapers, screensavers and themes can actually make this a pleasant pastime, especially if you are still using the older Windows XP onto your system.

Among the many themes you can install to give a fresh look to your operating system, Royale Vista aims to improve the well-known XP Royale theme and make it more Vista-like.

The theme allows many transformations, including toolbar aspect, visual styles and other enhancements that allow you to fully customize the appearance of XP's user interface. Since it is more than a simple theme that can be installed by double-clicking the Windows theme file, Royale Vista requires a bit of special care to properly install.

The first thing you should do after downloading and unpacking the files is to run 'Fonts.exe' then move the contents of the generated folder in your 'Fonts' directory. In case you don't want to waste time and manually browse to that location, there is a handy shortcut available in the Royale Vista folder you can use.

After the fonts' transfer is complete, you just have to extract the contents of the 'Theme.exe' file in the default directory (WINDOWS\Resources\Themes). Again, for your convenience, a shortcut to that folder is available so you can skip the manual navigation.

If all the steps have been correctly carried out, Royale Vista should become available in the 'Display Properties' area. However, it may happen that Windows XP will not recognize or load the theme and in this case you need to apply a patch for 'uxtheme.dll'.

All in all, Royale Vista can surely improve the looks of your OS and if you manage to get it working, you will enjoy a Vista-like environment on your old XP system.