LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2000 12:09 pm Post subject:

Feel free to post any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this article. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have, and look forward to your feedback on this article!

Original Article - http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00012.asp

Big Dog Joined: 18 Oct 2000 Posts: 4419

The following post was done by SPOT on the main news page of our site. I have duplicated it here so that our Forum readers may also benefit from it.

Quote:

I have been getting a TON of feedback on my article about modifying the Start button and it appears that everyone loves it. There were a few people that are not familiar with a Hex Editor and are not sure how to get around using one. I'm not surprised, considering hardly anyone ever actually uses one of these babies so don't feel bad if you are one of these people. If you're not sure how to use one, or search for strings....just go under the "Edit" menu and use the "find" option. In that field, you can search for anything like "5300" for example. Once you find the string you are looking for, you can either edit the Hex values OR the letters on the right side. It is much easier to use the letters on the right side. Just place your cursor in front of the letter you want to change and type in a new letter.

Now for the Win2K question. Does it work in Win2K? Yes it does. I had about 20 people tell me it worked fine and one person tell me it didn't. Here's how one of our readers Jason, accomplished it:

It is definitely possible to change the Start Menu within Windows 2000. You basically follow the same steps as documented on your site, but if you are on a NTFS partition, there are some alterations. You must open Explorer.exe and then start "Task Manager". From there, you end task on the process of explorer. You make the correct alterations, and then save the file (save it as explorer.exe, overwriting the old file). You must then click on "New Task", and browse to the explorer executable, and you are done.

And here's his cap:

Here's the way Chris did it in NT 4.0:

First of all, thanks for the start button modification article! As it turns out, this works great on NT (4.0 SP6a) as well. In fact, I didn't even need to reboot! This may not be the safest way to go, but this is what I did:

After creating your new Explorer file, follow these instructions:

1. Open up a command window so you can copy/rename files without explorer running.

2. Run Task Manager, go to the Processes tab and kill (End Process) explorer.exe.

3. In the command window copy/rename your modified Explorer file to explorer.exe. This should work fine since Explorer is not running.

4. In Task Manager, select New Task (Run...) from the File menu, and run your new explorer.exe.

That's it!

Ok...I hope this will answer some of the NT and 2000 questions for everyone. I really want to thank everyone for sending me their input on this article because it really made my day. I would love to mention everyone that e-mailed me, but the whole damn news page would be filled!!! Again....Thanks!

Fido@littlewhitedog.com

Stray Dog Joined: 22 Oct 2000 Posts: 6 Location: Singapore

Help! No matter what i try, i still can't locate the actual location of the correct "Start" area which i should modify...
I used Hackman 4.04 to do my modifications. I'm using WinME.
1. I tried to find the values 5300 7400 6100 7200 74, but i couldn't find an exact match of the whole string, even when i tried using 6100, or 5300, i couldn't find any matching strings.
2. I also tried to look for the word "Start". i found a lot of them, but i couldn't locate any which is before the string "there was an internal error..."
3. i even tried to locate the exact field "00028D70" on the left column. But it turns out that there's no "Start" string under there...
i'm totally stumped... Pls help.

Stray Dog Joined: 23 Oct 2000 Posts: 2 Location: USA

I was able to modify the start button after reading the article. Is it possible to modify the windows logo right next to the text?

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2000 7:42 am Post subject:

Quote:

Help! No matter what i try, i still can't locate the actual location of the correct "Start" area which i should modify...
I used Hackman 4.04 to do my modifications. I'm using WinME.
1. I tried to find the values 5300 7400 6100 7200 74, but i couldn't find an exact match of the whole string, even when i tried using 6100, or 5300, i couldn't find any matching strings.
2. I also tried to look for the word "Start". i found a lot of them, but i couldn't locate any which is before the string "there was an internal error..."
3. i even tried to locate the exact field "00028D70" on the left column. But it turns out that there's no "Start" string under there...
i'm totally stumped... Pls help.

Ok - to answer you question...in WinME, there is an extra "R" between the word "Start" and "There". Here is a cap of it in WinME. The one in the article is capped from a Win98 SE.

Hope that helps.

- Spot

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2000 7:44 am Post subject:

Quote:

I was able to modify the start button after reading the article. Is it possible to modify the windows logo right next to the text?

-------------
David Hickman
-------------

Stumpy...you'll have to use a third party program for that one..I'm sure there's a way to do it in Hex...but it will take you 3 years. Big Smile

Big Dog Joined: 18 Oct 2000 Posts: 4419

Quote:

I was able to modify the start button after reading the article. Is it possible to modify the windows logo right next to the text?

Hey Stumpy, the program you want to change the ICON on the start button can be found here: http://homepage1.nifty.com/kazubon/tclock/index.html You can also change all kinds of other things with it. We knew things (proggies) like this existed when we posted our article, we ever stated it in our article, we wanted to show you how to do it "Old School" style though... [ Sticking out Tongue

]

Fido@littlewhitedog.com

Stray Dog Joined: 23 Oct 2000 Posts: 21 Location: Canada

To change the windows icon 'old skool', it comes from user.exe in the windows directory.

Big Dog Joined: 18 Oct 2000 Posts: 4419

Which ICON in USER.EXE, there are a whole bunch in there... Its VERY difficult to change images embedded in EXE files with a HEX Editor, but I will give it a try if you really want to know.

Quote:

To change the windows icon 'old skool', it comes from user.exe in the windows directory.

Fido@littlewhitedog.com

Stray Dog Joined: 23 Oct 2000 Posts: 21 Location: Canada

Heh.. I didn't mean do the icons in the hex editor but just edit them with an icon editor that can do exes. It uses a different one depending on your color depth settings and resolution. Best to change 'em all!

Stray Dog Joined: 24 Oct 2000 Posts: 1

Hey Spot,
Great article!!! It worked fine on Win98SE for me.

-TommyG

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

Quote:

Heh.. I didn't mean do the icons in the hex editor but just edit them with an icon editor that can do exes. It uses a different one depending on your color depth settings and resolution. Best to change 'em all!

he's right, it uses like 4 diffrent icons depending on color depth and such the only way to match them up is:
A) experiment and hope you don't frag yourself ( especially under NTFS)
B) change em all which requires knowing the resolution of the icons in the file so you can match them up so you can make the new icons to replace the old ones bit for bit

-Brain

Brain@littlewhitedog.com

Big Dog Joined: 18 Oct 2000 Posts: 4419

Quote:

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>quote:

he's right, it uses like 4 diffrent icons depending on color depth and such the only way to match them up is:
A) experiment and hope you don't frag yourself ( especially under NTFS)
B) change em all which requires knowing the resolution of the icons in the file so you can match them up so you can make the new icons to replace the old ones bit for bit
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote>

Right!

I found a program that allows you to change the ICONS inside .EXE / .DLL files. It even allows you to select which one (resolution wise) you are editing. The help file goes into this in a bit' greater detail. I should have some time tonight to test this theory out a later today, but here is the download if someone wants to try it out beforehand. Let me know if it works!

Download: http://www.easyapps.com/

Fido@littlewhitedog.com

Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2000 10:05 am Post subject:

Can someone post a screen cap of Windows2000 and the exact place to change the "start" in a hex editor. I am having a dickens of a time trying to find the damn thing!

Rover
Editor/Writer/Reviewer
LittleWhiteDog.com
- Telling it like it is!

Stray Dog Joined: 24 Oct 2000 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Help. Problem same as earlier post except that I have W98 SR2. No 'Start' followed by the error message. There are 4 instances of the word 'Start' which are part of another message. Any other ideas?