Shoutbox

Does anybody know where the colors of the start menu are stored

Somewhere in the Registry: why?

quote:

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Originally posted by rollinroll
Does anybody know where the colors of the start menu are stored

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What colors do you mean?


If you mean the button which makes up the Start menu (the white text on the green background) then that button contains several bitmaps and texts stored in various resources.

To change that you need a resource editing program like ResHacker.

Text: "Start"

Backup %systemroot%\explorer.exe (so if you mess up you can copy back the original) and open explorer.exe in the resource editing program.

For the text "Start" on the start button look into the String Table -> 37 -> 1033 (1033=english language, if you have another language this number will be different). Change the text to whatever you like.

Windows XP does not have a limit to the amount of characters you can enter, though in practice you will see that more than 6 or 7 characters will actually not fit on a regular start button.

Do the same thing for String Table -> 38 -> 1033 (mind the capitalization though, it is probably different than the first string).

Windows icon

To change the actual icon displayed on the start menu next to "Start" (the Windows logo), go to the resource: Bitmap -> 143 -> 1033 and change that to the bitmap of our likings. The new bitmap should be 16 Million colors and 25 x 20 pixels in dimensions.

Windows border in menu

If you wanted to change the border on the left side of the menu, this bitmap is found at:
For XP Pro: Bitmap -> 167 -> 1033
For XP Home: Bitmap -> 166 -> 1033

Green background

The green background bitmap is stored in your Windows style definition file. This file can be found in %systemroot%\Resources\Themes\*. eg: for the standard Luna style this files is found in the subdirectory "Luna" with the name "luna.msstyles". Thus the bitmap resource depends on the current theme and color you're using. eg:
Bitmap -> BLUE_STARTBUTTON_BMP -> 1033
Bitmap -> HOMESTEAD_STARTBUTTON_BMP -> 1033
Bitmap -> METALLIC_STARTBUTTON_BMP -> 1033
etc...

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After each edit you need to (re)compile the file you've edited before you save it. In ResHacker this is automatically asked though.

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Note that you probably can't edit those files directly since they are in use. And even if you do manage to edit and save them, it is possible that you wont see the changes since Windows detected that those files were changed and thus replaced them back with the originals.

One way to get around this is to make your changes, save the files with another name and then start up a second Windows and replace the files from the first Windows from here.

Or you could replace them by booting up in DOS mode.

Or you could first delete the original files (located in %systemroot%\I386 or the likes).

Or you could turn of Windows' system file protection.

etc...

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NOTE!: changing files like that is illegal since it violates the EULA.