"During Royale's development (the XP Media Center theme), the graphic artists also produced a black version of the skin, sans the overused "glass" effect. The result is an aesthetic black skin named "Royale Noir", it even works with Office 2003.

Since the skin was never released (or reached final adjustments) there are a few issues with it: some of the colors don't meet the overall "feel" (they're too purple-ish compared to the greys of the bitmaps) and the inactive titlebars are a little too dark.

You'll find it's been signed by Microsoft and doesn't require a custom UxTheme.dll in case there are any doubts as to its authenticity.

If you already have Royale installed, you'll need to remove it as both of these skins share the same name.

This skin has not been released to anyone outside Microsoft, until now."


http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/

I'm using it now - looks fantastic

bad the download on that site doesn't work

im using it too

i posted it in the gameslave irc channel over the weekend

if u want a copy mani just let me know

http://www.zen62619.zen.co.uk/apps/Themes/royale_noir.rar

I figured it out, they just screwed the url.

Very nice it is too. Vista/Office 2007 has a black skin that's very like this and it I love that too.

yeh its a lovelly theme

Nice theme.

Goes well with This or this in my opinion

Well, on widescreen anyway.

ohh very classy

Nice

All I get is darkblue :/

right click on desktop goto properties

select appearance

then select royale noir as colour scheme instead of royale

Thanks Matt!
Oooooh fancy XP now