For this tutorial you will need Reshacker, found here.


Don't you just hate that ugly Flying Windows image on your start button, or even worse that boring, old title "Start". We've seen it since Windows 95 and it's time for a change.

We will need to edit a VERY important file on your computer to change this, so the first thing we will do is BACK UP!! Open up My Computer and navigate to C:\Windows\ and find "explorer.exe". Make a copy of this and save it somewhere easy to find (I recommend the same directory) as explorer.bak (or something similar). Now no matter what damage we cause to explorer.exe, we have a backup.

The next thing we will do is actually open up explorer.exe to edit it. You can either drag-n-drop explorer.exe onto ResHacker, or you can open ResHacker and click File->Open and select explorer.exe from your C:\Windows\ directory. When this opens up, you will notice you have several items on the left hand side. I suggest browsing around these items to see what you can change here. There is a lot in here you can customize if you decide to.


To change the start menu text, click on String Table->37->1033 and where you see "Start", change this to whatever you would like your start button to display. While Windows XP does not have a limit to the amount of characters you can enter, in practice you will find more than 6 or 7 will not actually fit on a regular start button.

After you have changed this text to whatever you like, click the Compile button at the top. Then go to String Table->38->1033 and change "Start" to the same thing you entered into String 37. Click Compile at the top.


Now, to change the icon displayed on the start menu next to "Start", navigate to Bitmap->143->1033. You will see that ugly Flying Windows. Click Actions->Replace Bitmap->Open with New Bitmap. Now, you will have to have a bitmap you would like to replace this one with. This new image should be 16 Million colors and 25 x 20 in dimensions. Select the bitmap you would like to use and hit Replace.


If you wanted to change the border, this bitmap is found at:

For XP Pro:    Bitmap->167->1033
For XP Home:   Bitmap->166->1033

Now comes the fun part. You have the icon and text customized how you like it (along with anything else you would like to change...just try to keep to the same format for all the images as currently is used ) and we need to save it.

There's only one problem: explorer.exe is protected by Windows File Protection, which means you can't just replace it and go from there.


At this point close every program out EXCPET ResHacker and My Compter. In My Computer click Tools->Folder Options, click the View Tab, scroll down and check "Show Hidden Files and Folders" and uncheck "Hide Protected Operating System Files". Then hit Apply and OK.

Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\dllcache (NOTE: this is a hidden folder containing backups of most of your important operating system files...be careful what you do in here ). Find explorer.exe in here and rename it to explorer.bak. You may get a popup or two...just hit Cancel on the first popup and Yes on the second to continue. Go back into ResHacker and save your opened explorer.exe to C:\Windows\System32\dllcache as "explorer.exe".

Now comes the tricky part. Explorer.exe is the file that allows you to navigate around your computer. As you can probably tell it is the file that controls your start menu, taskbar, and most navigation functions on your PC. Thus, it's always in use. You will probably realize from your own experiences, you cannot overwrite or delete a file that's currently in use.

Sooo...we have to end explorer.exe. Hit ctrl + alt + delete at the same time to bring up your task manager. Any instances of My Computer or Internet Explorer under the programs tab should be ended...just click on those lines and hit "End Task". Then click to the "Processes" tab. Find any instances of IEXPLORER.EXE, EXPLORER.EXE, iexplorer.exe, explorer.exe and click them, then hit end task. Hit "OK" on the popup.


YOUR START MENU AND TASKBAR ARE GONE!!!! (Don't worry...that's supposed to happen ).

Now, back in ResHacker (if you can't just open Reshacker, hit ALT + TAB to switch to it), click File->Save As and save this file as "explorer.exe" to C:\Windows\ . If you get the popups again (because you are modifying an important system file) hit "cancel" and then "yes" again.

Now....back in your Task Manager, click File->New Task and type in "explorer.exe" without the quotes.


Explorer should start up with your new start menu icon and text (along with any other changes you have made).


If you get an error about Explorer being a 16-bit application, or something to that effect...you can do this to restore Explorer:

• In ResHacker, click File->Open
• Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\dllcache and delete explorer.exe
• Navigate back up to C:\Windows\ and delete explorer.exe
• Right click on explorer.bak (you'll be happy you made a backup at this point ) and choose rename, then rename it back to explorer.exe

Then you can hit cancel (because we didn't actually need to open a file) and go back into Task Manager and click File->New Task and type in "explorer.exe". If everything went as instructed, you will have your backed up original copy restored. Now, you can go back and try again.


Warning....it took me 4 tries before my system would accept my hacked version. If at first you don't succeed...try, try again.

That should about cover it. Another method to remove these two items completely is by editing content margins in Style Builder, but we will leave that for a separate tutorial.

Any problems or questions, feel free to ask them in the forums.