changing icons in XP

[dacflyer]

i am curious if its possible to copy icons from win98se to XP
i am switching over, slowly but surely, but some of the icons i cannot get used to...yet.
so i am wondering if its possible to do what i want to do.

[haklesup]

icons for what?

Most icons are stored within the EXE file that they represent (for that exe or one of the data files it assigned when it ran). Occasionally you'll find an odd .ICO file lying around.

If a program has more than one icon available, right click on the icon you don't like, choose properties and press the change icon button. Any choices you have will be shown. If you press browse, you can select another ICO or EXE or DLL to pull icons from. Some programs like explorer in the windows folder have a bunch inside. You can also assign BMP and JPG in some cases

[dacflyer]

well i actually like the control panel icon from win98 , but i do not like the one in XP..
there is a few other icons in windows i'd like share over if possible.

[CeaSaR]

I've seen ways to extract the icon from an EXE or DLL, but have never done it. Try looking
at Nonags.com. I think they have some Icon Extractors there. Also, most icons you can
use easily will be found in the Moricons.dll. Just search for it on your computer. If they are
too modern looking or you want the old ones back, just copy it over from the old machine.

CeaSaR

[dacflyer]

thats what i was basically asking if there was a way to copy over the icons, not sure how to do it..
i\ll look at the other sites you suggested also

[reloadron]

Hi Ya dacflyer.

Years ago I went through my icon phase changing icons for whatever reasons. The first trick in changing an icon is finding out where the icon originates from. Some are easy to change by making your own little image with an .ico extension or just replacing them in their location with an icon of your choice. The difficult ones are those embedded in a .dll file as now you need a tool to open the .dll file and change the icon. This is where I used a tool named ResHack (short for Resource Hacker) which still exist and can be found here:

http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

That tool was my new best friend years ago.

My workstation is still running XP and the mentioned file moricon.dll on it has about 249 icons in it. Problem is crawling through 249 icons to see what they look like.

Anyway, ResHacker may help you on your mission.

Ron

[MrAl]

Hi Ron,


Oh yeah, i forgot to mention that too. I had made my own icons for a while too, for special purpose files. I used a simpler program for making the icons but it only worked in 16 colors That's old now. Still use some of the icons though.


Later:
Oh i just checked, my older program was for drawing new icons and saving them for later use.
Wonder if there is a new program for that too.

[reloadron]

Hi Ya MrAl

I know Photoshop can be used but as to free I used Infranview I believe. I used an old copy of JASC Paint Shop Pro to create the icon images then saved as a bitmap file. Then opened the .bmp in Infranview and saved as an .ico file. I think I would start with a 91 by 91 pixel canvas and then reduce as the little buggers made my head hurt. For Windows XP there were 4 sizes used 48 × 48, 32 × 32, 24 × 24, and 16 × 16 pixels. There are a few other free programs out there also but can't recall them.

I also really liked Resource Hacker as I mentioned. That little tool was great for hacking and modifying .dll files.

Ron

[CeaSaR]

I was checking through NONAGS.com and I found this utility. It seems to be what you might want.
Additionally, you may use a "paint" style program to create your own icons, but they must be square
at either 16x16 or 32x32 pixels. Just save them as .ico files under the "SaveAs" option.

CeaSaR