merlin(825):
http://i36.tinypic.com/2jez67l.png

hi des, please have a look at this:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/00oxy4.

thanks

anonymous(823):

the status bar that is on your screenshot can be done only by rewriting the code.
you can change the seek bar panel height with reshacker by changing the dialog 10022's height. and after that, you need to change some hex values with a hexeditor.

moving the seek button up:
change hex value 09 at offset 9f76b. to move up bx 1px change it to 08. to move up by 2px change it to 07. and so on...

moving the seek track up:
change hex value 09 at offset a0128. to move up by 1px change it to 08... and so on.

the whole seek bar panel background color:
change hex value 0f at 9fe04. use random hex values because i guess it depends on your system color's configuration. on my system 09 is grey, 05 is white, 15 an other grey, 25 is black. i think the colors are limited here with this hack. you cant use red or orange etc. i dont know for sure.

sorry i meant the "status bar", could you give me some details on what i should modify in order to change the height and background of the seek bar like you mentioned?

des(820):
after what you said i guess it would be difficult to have the "seek track" pressed beveled effect like in the screen-shot. i guess that modifying the source code would be the only way, but i read how you mentioned how difficult it is to compile it and i've never compiled anything before in my life, which leaves me no more options but to stick with this ugly default looking seek track. thanks for the help though!.

there is a new version:

http://noob.hu/2010/08/24/untitled1.png
http://noob.hu/2010/08/24/untitled2.png

anonymous(819):

if i remember correctly, i can change the seekbar's background to some of the system colors. and i can resize the height of the whole seek bar and seek "track" as well. the only thing i couldnt change yet (like the volume) is the thumb or seek button or whatever it is called. i even can resize this "thumb", make it wider or narrower. and i can even eliminate this thumb, but that would be not a good choice i guess.

by seektrack i meant the track which changes to white when it is playing a file.

sorry i forgot to upload the image

http://imgur.com/62rz3.png

hi des(817):
i think mpc is a great program but there are some things about the ui that i don't like. the seekbar is inconsistent and looks strange compared with the classic one. i don't like the black background in the status bar. is it possible that by hex/dissasembling this could be done?

if anyone interested:
mpc-hc seekbar and volumebar hack (again?)
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/931044-mpc-hc-seekbar-volumebar-hack

merlin(815):

hehe. i should have known this. simply i just forgot it. too many hacks in my mind and i just cant take it anymore. :d

i finally got it.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/axxawg

have you tried with the luna style? the default blue xp style? - i dont know what the heck is wrong with your system. that scroll bar should be skinned too.

first of all thanks des.

i just grabbed your appwiz.cpl and started it. it says in english "add or remove programs" but it looks exactly(!) the same as mine: it is a mix of classic view and my new vs.

merlin(811):

i extracted my appwiz.cpl from my xp cd. just to make sure your file is ok and it is a reg problem or something. http://www.sendspace.com/file/8nzioz

i just had a close look at the mssytles of my new theme and found two black (and too big) bitmaps which seemed to be put in that wlan cpl file. i changed them and taaadaa! yes! and since i do have a permisson to change that theme i just deleted them and created new ones. looks much better now. only the software (cpl file) still worries me. why does it look like in classic view? in windowmetrics there are almost no entires after deleting all that stuff yesterday. is there another place in the registry which could be responsible for that strange mixed classic/new style look of that cpl file?

merlin(809):

it is indeed, strange. it could be the registry again. (windowmetrics)

well... i am sending you two pictures: in classic look and in my new theme.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/llym7n

as you see these are the two windows which look very suspicious to me: software placesbar and the scrollbar - all like classic view. and wlan window on the left- just strange. i also showed this to the guy who made it who said: i cannot find any issues in my theme.
well... in case des that you could have any idea i would be thankful.

merlin(807):

as far as i know it is not possible to add more shortcuts to the placesbar.
hmm. looks like it is a cpl bug but i dont know it for sure. have you tried it with win classic ort with an other vs?

done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-) lol

i just had to delete all the entries in the ..windowsmetric and restart the computer. coooool! i still have two questions des, so please have a look at the pic.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o26j5v

now this sounds complicated des... but let me try it... i'll see you at midnight :-)

merlin(804):
see post 801. second part with the messed up registry.

hi des,

please have a look at this picture:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ny822t

thanks

it could be an easier hack for that, but i havent figured it out yet.
yes. fony 1.4.0 tiny and simple app with the ability to import ttf fonts and convert them into fon bitmap files.

thanks for the quick reply des

the no shell icons hack worked first time.
as for the taskbar text, i'd already thought about that but i was hoping for an easier solution like maybe a hack in the explorer.exe.
i've a font app anyway so i guess i'll get to work.

quick question - how do you go about creating a bitmap font (.fon) and do you know of any software that allows you to create, edit or covert a .ttf to .fon font?

bd(800):

1.
afaik, only using visualstyle + using modified fonts. you have to alter a font and use that on the taskbar button when it is clicked / active. you need a font editor to do that, and you need to move the letters by 1px up and 1px left. (if i remember correctly)

here is an example.

[taskband::toolbar]
font = normal x font, 8

[taskband::toolbar(checked)]
font = modified x font, 8

[taskband::toolbar(hotchecked)]
font = modified x font, 8

[taskband::toolbar(hot)]
font = normal x font, 8

[taskband::toolbar(normal)]
font = normal x font, 8

[taskband::toolbar(pressed)]
font = modified x font, 8

2.
this is a known bug. first you need to apply the vs then modify the registry. but first you need to restore the original windowmetrics. here hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics delete all keys, logoff, switch to win classic, logoff, apply your vs, then set the icons null, logoff.

sometimes the system forgets to change the fonts properly when messing with the registry. deleting windowmetrics + logoff and applying the vs should fix this problem. i had it a few times when i tested my vs but this trick fixed it always.

hi des

1.when you click a taskbar button to show / hide a window the text and icon on the taskbar button move up(hide) and down(show) by 1 or 2px.
is it possible to stop this?

2.i tried out the no shell icons hack but had mixed results.the icons are gone but when i apply my vs (which uses arial size 7 throughout pretty much) the text
on the titlebar and menu are different.the menu font looks like a size 8 and the titlebar looks around 10 - 12.any idea why this happens?

thanks

merlin(798):
as far as i know, if a rar file has recovery record it is possible to repair damaged rar file. but zip? i dont know.

well... it's me again. and my question is: do you know how to extract a partial downloaded .zip file? winrar is not able to open it.

don't be pal... you are a great help :-)

merlin(795):

sometimes i just forget about xp home. (i have xp pro) sorry.

1) no systeminfo.exe on my xp home
2) msinfo2.exe - i do not see any date
3) your script works fine! thanks

merlin(792):

i am still using winxp and this command works fine. maybe you dont have the systeminfo.exe in your computer., also there is msinfo32.exe in xp that displays sys informations. btw here is a vbscript for something similar: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xd5i7u

last line is the install date. also works on my xp.

thats alright des. thanks for trying anyway

negative! "the command "systeminfo" cannot be found or is written not properly" - this is what i get here :-(... please remember i only have xp.

run cmd.exe then type systeminfo, then enter. you will see a bunch of system informations. look for original install date.

i truly apologize but i don't get it des. cmd.exe - ok. and then? what does "systeminfo" mean here?

merlin(788):

cmd.exe > systeminfo
(original install date)

hi des,

do you know if windows saves the date i installed xp on my laptop? i would like to know the exactly date. thanks

anonymous(786):

i dont know why is that, because as you can see here (my test.php), it works fine. w-t-f? i am out of ideas.

i copied that code and made a new .php with it. i typed august, lowercase, hit submit and nothing happened. the url changed though. ?sendmail=yes was added to the end.

here on this server this test.php i made works well. http://whoseline.isgreat.org/temp/test.php

if you type august and press the button it is ok. if you type anything else there, it is not ok. simple as hell. try it. i will completely rewrite the whole send mail system today.

http://paste-it.net/public/qdfbf6d/

it will work keep trying.

man, i don't even know anymore. i have made the changes you suggested, but i keep getting that error.

ok.

use this mailform.php. the antispam answer is 15.
http://paste-it.net/public/q707d37/

i modified it so if antispam = 15 the mail will be sent otherwise it wont.

oh . i might know what is the problem here.

$sp = strtolower(date("f"));
echo $sp;

because it is an uppercase f!!! stupid msgboard "bug"

interesting. i dont see any anomalies. do some test with this date commands.
http://www.pctalknet.com/php/date.php

use day name, whatever you want and see what is the output. it should have worked though.

http://www.ominous-silence.x10.mx/phpinfo.php

create a file and paste this into it:
<?php

phpinfo();

?>

save as phpinfo.php then upload to your server and write the link here.

anonymous(776):

hell yeah! we found the source of the problem. of course it doesnt work! because "f" is not august. :) yes, something wrong with the server config.

here is a table what f means and the rest of the date stuffs: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php using f, should print out the name of the month.

i try to find a workaround for this, but if i cant, you need to use an other validation. like 5+5=? or something similar.

i just see the letter "f", without quotes. i assume this means that the server isnt configured properly?

anonymous(774):

in contact.php, right after "?php", put this 2 lines there:
$sp = strtolower(date("f"));
echo $sp;

save the file and see. you should see the current month's name on the page. if it is not august, that is the problem. that means the server where your files are, isnt configured properly or something.

exact same thing. that mailform includes the $spam == $sp part. i changed that, but still doesnt work.

anonymous(771):

that proves i ****ed it up somehow. :d

http://www.sendspace.com/file/i3zokg

yup, stripped version works.

if possible could you .rar up that one you had working and send it?

oh... hmm... not $spam == $sp
it is $spam = $sp

hehe.

if you strip the code like the original, does it work? assuming yes...
http://paste-it.net/public/c347d7f/

the $to = ""; is empyt so write there your mail.
i am missing something, but dont know what.

i copied that contact.php, and yet again i got the same error. so im assuming its the mailform. here is what i have/you gave me:

http://paste-it.net/public/ub7bf99/

that " "; } ?> " doesnt matter if you get this when you open a php file locally from your computer.

i dont know what the heck. maybe i am missing something but here: http://whoseline.isgreat.org/temp/contact.php this seems to be working. because if i fill everything the mail sent msg tells me that the mail() command does its job.

still not working for me. still getting the same error.

in the mailform.php

the line starting with "if" should be:
if (($spam == $sp) && ($message != "") && ($name != "") && ($email != ""))

hmm. i tested it before uploaded and "worked". i mean i got the mail sent msg although i havent got any mail because you know. i take a look at it again.

also, just noticed, it seems to be displaying some of the code in the browser
" "; } ?> "

thanks. doesn't seem to work though. i keep getting "all fields required" even though i have everything filled. any ideas?

http://www.ominous-silence.x10.mx/contact.php

i think i know why that link didnt work. because here, all the words converted to capitalized words. that could cause link problems here.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/dsenyy
all fields have to be filled. antispam = current month name, lowercase
i hope it works.

here you go:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/lgkzsq

please bear in mind, i have never really done any php before, so it might be a little sloppy/broken in places. i don't know why that link doesn't work. strange.

you know, the select form: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/select.html
i just had to strip down the html tags in my example

anonymous(754):

not found. yes it is possible to use/add any form objects. (select, radio button, checkbox or whatever) in that case you need modify this line:

input name='subject' type='text'

and change to:
select name="subject"
option>text_1/option
option>text_2/option
option>text_3/option
/select

as you can see u can use any form objects. the only thing that is important the name of the form. in that case: "subject".

later i will add the validation to this little contact php below. or you can upload (in zip or rar) yours if you have already designed it

done, and got it to work.
http://www.ominous-silence.x10.mx/copy of contact.php
although it ignored my inputs and just used some stuff that was in the mailform.php
also, is it possible to make the subject field into drop down menu with some subjects to select from? i think that would be nicer.

lets get the validation in first though!

anonymous(752):

yes, it is possible. i have a php mail script just like this one: http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mail.asp but i have just tried it and looks like my server didnt support mail() function, because havent received anything yet. (tried 1.5 hour ago)

try this script and if it works at your page (if the server supports), we can add this antispam function i have here. or something similar.

thanks for the reply des

im looking for something that will send me an email instead of a msgboard, but has a validation thing like this one. would it be possible to modify what you have to send emails to my account?

still using 32bit.

google for simple flatfile php guestbook. you will find some. but if you want this, i can upload it for you. just i need to make some modifications first, because it is integrated into my design.

using flat files (stores entries in a text file) is much easier to use than setup and config a guestbook php that requires mysql database. (not that if configuring a mysql databse is so hard) but it is easy to use and simple as hell. :) this msgboard is only a couple of php lines, simple, flexible and lightweight.

yeh
makes sense.
been applying some of these hacks to 64bit os
have you done 64bit?

hey des,

do you know where i can get a decent contact form? something like this message thing with a validation section

yeah, but the windows has not been designed this way originally.

yeh i can live with it.
thought iconless would have made things faster.

combrown(745):

i dont know. it could be a bit slower, (never noticed it) but i really dont care if it looks so neat and futuristic. :) going to iconless requires some compromise.

hi des

i have noticed the noshellicons reg hack affects explorers performance.
in the spirit of keeping it minimal an crisp.
i know this sounds picky so really it is not that bigger deal.
but one simple test i do is to see how many explorer windows i can bring up consecutively as quickly as possible.
i hold the windows key and rapidly tap the e key.
with noshellicons applied the delay in explorer windows coming up is quite severe.
whereas if i remove the hack to default.
explorer goes like a bat out of hell.
interesting to note.

i dare not spend time to remove icons from shell32.dll in order to acheive the same effect.
what do you think mate?
am i blowing hot air?

oh ps

the way you say your start panel is disabled.
it's funny you should mention that.
i actually disable explorer on all the win32/64 systems here and just run from a command line.
still get riled by that old 3d classic border though.

lol

cheers for now.

hey des

thanks for replying.
i should have replied sooner to my last only post mate.
busy fixing other peoples computers rather than my own.
i have no expectations at all of your vs, i am just jealous like the rest of the folk here.
i actually appreciate you not releasing it, makes us all learn something for once.
happily i was able to get style builder going and amazingly i am off to a flying start.

even though i have linux systems here, i like to keep things diverse plus a need to support my customers who naturally use windows.
i think we have alot in common, i like to make windows run as smooth and as crisp as possible.
people are surprised to find how well their old wxp clunkers go when they get a good cleanup.
but what is old, it is just too fast these days, and when i meet a fella like yourself who is making good of what the bigwigs call superseded.
you are after my own heart mate.
i will keep modding this virt xp i have here and see if i can shrink that windows operating folder.
keep your vs, it your own substance mate.
i will see if i can work on something similar with some of my own flavours.
speak again soon des and thanks for inspiring me.

combrown(740):

hi and thanks.

yes, the win classic is good, but not enough. i mean using that, some of the things remains uncustomizable, or at least remains less customizable. the main reason i dont publish my vs is because it is unfinished. (the new start panel is not finished in example. because i never use it. in fact it is completely disabled in my system)

but i think there are some of good looking vs out there somewhere that you can modify to your taste. but if you dont find any, i can upload my vs. but that is designed for completely iconless environments, so might not look good using icons.

about restoring and backup:
i have backups of all my hacks, (in hdd and in dvd-rw) + i have a list (txt) of my hacks what i hex-edited and how i did it. also i am very careful windows user, and know what i am doing, so my windows installation lasts 3-4 years till i need to reinstall it. (due to motherboard failure or similar event)

lol

how do you keep track of your work and if you have to restore an os do you restore all this work you have done.
do you create your own source disk?

love you des

hi des
sorry i have not had a chance to read right through all this stuff to see what i have missed that could help me.

i am in the process of minimalism when it comes to my computer lab.
consolidating and virtualising all my servers etc.
what i am trying now is minimalise my desktop.
i had a go at the 3d border/colors which i changed in the registry, but it is not totally desired.
as i am sure many people have said including myself.
we love your visual style.
i recently tried to download style builder to get started on this and have a go.
but have not been able to.
my goal is to minimze but create a template to use for the foreseeable future.
the look i like is alot like afterstep, but only in terms of the windows.
as you may have guessed from my last post i aim to achieve flat windows with a clean title bar.
i am not too great at hex editing but i am happy to give it a go.
mainly it seems i need to create a visual style to complete this.
consider me a newbie, whats the best way for me to start.
i tried that glassic but it has alot to be desired for minimal needs.
also i am using a 64bit version of xp but currently i am testing a 32 bit version in vmware and so far so good.
testing out some of your tweaks and hacks.
i keep taking regular snapshots to fall back in the event of failure.
once i get a build i like i will chuck it on the iram and watch her fly.
thanks des, you input and site you have here is amazing, it inspires me to create my own environment.
does your visual style apply exactly that same to a cmd prompt like a terminal would in linux.
i am really after tha kde kstep look in xp.
very similar to your funky desktop.
sorry for the dribble mate and thanks in advance.

well... this is how i managed this.

1) i saved my current .json file as a backup
2) i opened the old .json file
3) i saved the old .json file as a .html file
4) i opened my current .json file again
5) i double clicked on the .html file - and clicked and bookmarked all sites i wanted to have in my current bookmarks.
finished! :-) not as handy as "copy" and "paste" but i have achieved my goal. thanks

merlin(737):

look for json editor. it is a javascript object notation file. can be easily edited.
here is an online editor: http://jsoneditor.appspot.com

however i don't know how to import from old json file except doing it manually one by one. isn't there available a json editor firefox plugin? or something that you can import / edit json files with?

hello des,

we assume i have a bookmark backup file "bookmarks-2009-07-23.json" (firefox), which is, as you see, one year old. now i would like to import a part of my old bookmarks to my current firefox bookmarks file. precisely it would mean to import an folder with a lot of bookmarks from the old .json file and put it into the current .json file. do you know how to do this?

interesting.what the heck?

.... no it is not cool... :-( ... it worked for 1 minute. but after restarting windows it does not work again ... i apologize for that chaos... i am not going to touch it again, i promise... nevertheless thank you again des

cool. :)

hi des - problem solved.

i changed the registry entry from "c:\windows\system32\picpick\picpick.exe" "%1" to
c:\windows\system32\picpick\picpick.exe,%1 and it works!
have a nice weekend...:-)

hm. maybe it's the picpic that lacks of that capability or i dont know.

nope pal,

i just copied the picpick folder into system32 and changed also the registry entries - the same - picpick must be running to be able to edit a image file from viewer.

maybe, because picpic is not in system32.... ? i am just guessing.

just a note about my new picpick program. i can edit a bitmap file from windows viewer (shimgvw.dll) but i have to open picpick first! i did not notice that yesterday because the program was open all day long. now i wanted to edit a picture - picpick is runnig but no picture to edit! i always have to start the program first to be able to edit a file from the picture viewer. stupid...

yep, as always you are right. i changed the edit command for mspaint within the registry from "start mspaint" to "start picpick" and oh wonder it works. thanks des.

merlin(726):

rename this app to mspaint.exe (and remove the original) or i guess it is a reg settings that refers to mspaint.exe and can be changed with regedit. (edit command)

and if that fails, open shimgvw.dll in a hexeditor an look for mspaint.exe. (6d00730070006100) renaming that could do the job.

hello des,

i could use some help. i downloaded a tiny cute program called picpic and i intend to use it instead of mspaint. how to change the properties of the picture files (gif, jpg..) is not the problem. i would like to change this: double-click on a jpeg file - shimgvw.dll is started - and withing this viewer i can edit this picture by clicking on the edit icon on the bottom, then mspaint starts. at this place i would like to start picpic instead of mspaint.
do you know how to fix it? thanks...

yeah. but this type of hacking isn't easy. i mean sometimes could be easy, sometimes i don't even know what i am doing. :) i don't know "how it works", how it affects the code i just know if i change something i could cause a glitch in some functions or the program and preventing it from working properly. and hopefully not causing errors, failures.

in this case turning off the drawfocusrect function without causing any other errors.

des(723):
yes i have. at first, i wasn't sure where to start since you said change everything to 90's from 8bf55... but in your screenshot you changed 8bff to b801 55 to 00 and so on.
you can see my changes i made in the link with the file user32.dll.hackedfail2 that i posted in the comment section below.

i also do happen to know that application exist. it does the job, but i'm more willing to learn how to hack it myself. i'm having a hard time with windows 7 though, not so many sites like yours exist on the web ;).

hm... that's what i was afraid of. the first part is almost the same as in xp but the second half after the first five 90s is something new. and i see by changing everything to 90s till you see loadbitmapwm, 07cc isn't the solution.

have you tried to the same as i did in xp? like in this pic:
http://des.virtualplastic.net/user32_dll_focusrect.png
...or you just changed everything to 90s from 8bff55?

sorry, i have no idea how to solve this at the moment. and i can't even test it myself. :(

btw, i happen to know that there is a shell extension to remove that focusrect in win7.
universal focus rectangle remover.

des(721):
i uploaded the user32.dll instead, it's only 900kb, also my hacked attempts that cause the startup error.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/tdzjtnk5cy3/user32.dll
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jykydmyqoyk/user32.dll.hackedfail2
http://www.mediafire.com/file/nrzl2mmfzmi/user32.dll.hackfail3

mike(720):

so. i think (guess) i know what might be the problem. in xp after the last 90 90 90 90 there is setscrollrange. that means these five 90s at the end is the end of the drawfocusrect. in win7 there are also five 90s but that is not the end of it.

what i want you to do is scroll down more and see how long till the "end". you know, till you see something different. and make a screenshot of that. or better if you save the whole code (txt) and upload to somewhere. sendspace.com or something.

hackers dissasambler, file menu, save text. and compress the txt (rar, zip) because this will be a huge file. 10 mb or more...

des(719):
thanks for your quick response,
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9205/beforeandaftern.png

mike(718):

well i dont use win7 so do a screenshot of the disassembler window (with loaded user32.dll of course) so i can see whats it like. a screenshot like this: http://des.virtualplastic.net/user32_dll_focusrect.png

and make it larger window so i can see before the 8bff55 too.

des,

regarding your focus rectangle hack. i can't seem to get it to work, on every restart i would get start up failure and the machine would reboot itself. i found the drawfocusrect on hdasm, and replaced all the values from 8bff55 until i encounter 5 90's at the end. i'm using win7 x64, it's slightly different but i still see 8bff55 and the 5 90's at the end. could you please help me out or is win7 untouchable?

yeah, that would be cool.

i was able to do something similar to my old mpc seekbar / playbar hack though.
with no video file loaded: http://noob.hu/2010/05/16/mpchc.png
playing video file: http://noob.hu/2010/05/16/24.png

des(715):
real nice with the audiobar:) now if we only can get that playbar fixed aswell :d

if anybody interested: mpc-hc volume bar hack (revert to default win style)

hex 05bf20 at offset d7342 -> change to 05bf10
http://noob.hu/2010/05/03/Image1.png

again, thanks des. yeah i have contacted the author, but i havent got a reply from him and its been over a month. thank you for trying anyway. much appreciated.

ok forget that i uploaded.
so i downloaded the full script pack. it gives an error at line 35. jquery.slinkyslider.js, so i checked line 35 which is: var elheight = container.offsetheight();

i changed it to: var elheight;
now it works but it is a little bit buggy in my firefox 2.0.0.20. in the demo.htm there are two alert() functions saying yes or no. i just removed it because it gave me an alert msg. why was it even there, i dont know.

the best if you contact the script's author.

thanks, although how can i put code in now? and the 5th panel doesnt show up properly and the bottom border is messed in the first panel

oh sorry. i just thought you want to use it as a cool navigation system on your desktop.
try this. http://www.sendspace.com/file/m4flth

im not using it as a background, im trying to make a website with it. the script works fine on the authors website, i downloaded it and uploaded it to a server and i got the same result as when i tried to launch it from my computer.

stu(708):
you mean using it as a html background? the explorer.exe uses and old javascript engine to render a script in the html document, so this is why this doesnt work. the javascript engine built-in windows is simply outdated, it doesnt support the new javascript. :(

i guess the only workaround for this is to find a similar javascript that works on ie6. and even if you have ie7 or ie8 installed it wont work using it as background, because ie and explorer.exe is 2 different things. i could be wrong though.

alright, i downloaded this, but the demo doesnt seem to work.
http://www.ohwrite.co.uk/files/slinkyslider/demo.html
any ideas?

stu(706):
not much.

des,
do you know anything about jquery?

well, i dont know. it depends on what that sharpenviro shell capable of. try to set a html doc as a background or if it doesnt work check the sharpenviro feature list to see if there are any active desktop support or something similar in it.

i am using sharpenviro can i put html as my background in it ?

ok thnx. =)

html desktop as i refer to it. but yes, it is a html document set as background. here is a template how to use execute commands within html document: http://des.virtualplastic.net/htmldesk.htm (download, and set as background) and also check it out this for some more info: http://des.virtualplastic.net/tutorial.html#htmldesk
(for tips like hiding the activex warning message)

now after knowing the basics you can design your own html desktop. you can use javascripts or vbscripts for functions, and flash objects, images, icons, css for the design.

my custom windows is not available in a downloadable format. i only shared my tweaks and hacks, and some applications, shell extensions i use.

can i download your customized win ? and if yes then where?

again, thank you. another thing, isnt your desktop a html document? what exactly is that? i dont want your one, but do you have a template that i can work from? or something?

explorer.exe, menu 204.

thank you des. can you tell me where the classic menu .dll is located/called. its been a while since i have edited them and i have forgotten.

oh, i mean even if you use a double sized taskbar the horizontal space is limited.

anonymous(695):

use replacer (google for it) to replace the file because the file protection wont let you replace the file easily.

the numbers of characters (or the available space) are limited there. i dont think you can have the whole long date format in a single line there. to be honest i havent tried to hack it. i will take a look at it.

hi des,

i recently formatted my pc and i need some quick help.
i have tried to reshack the run dialog and the classic start menu.
i compile the script as usual and save the .dll but it doesn't seem to work
i'm currently running xp pro sp3

also, you know when you increase the size of a taskbar, you can see the date etc.
can i edit this so it can fit along side the time instead of under it?

thanks!

yes, but when you use a vs and you change a color in the registry, the windows will change the current theme name to win classic modified. anyway, it is just a string in the registry. now mine says: windows xp (minxp) despite of that my vs name is totally different.

ok, will get known with stylebuilder, but in your active desktop video i can see that your current theme (in display properties) is win classic modified, but taskabr and dialog buttons colors are different. explane please and i will back off with questions for a while :)

in classic style the caption buttons (min, max, close) glyphs are in the marlett.ttf font. (hidden font) using the classic style the tweaking options are limited, so i recommend to use a visualstyle so you can fine tuning it. (button face and taskbar color cant be separated in classic style. you need to use a visualstyle to do that.)

classic look-alike, minimal vs:
http://lassekongo83.deviantart.com/art/glassic-candy-47170768
http://nevezen.deviantart.com/art/dumbass-v5-78896563

thank you des! corrected font settings and registry, now all dialogs & menus looks much better because of capitalized font :) exept thos ugly titlebar minimize, close etc buttons, can you plz point where to look in your tutorials repository, how to change it, because i did not find. how to change button face separately from taskbar color? :( http://i39.tinypic.com/wa2c6v.jpg

daemonz-lv(689):

changing all the dialog font size would be a hell of a job, so i recommend to alter the font instead. the default windows dialog font size is 8. if the standard 0755 font appears too big, that is because its default size is 6, and the dialog forces it to size 8. (i changed its default size to 8 by changing the units per em value)

haxcorp is ok. that is 8 pixel size font.

hi, please tell how to change this standard0755 font size from 8 to 6 (downloaded from font-cat dot com) on oll xp dialogs, by changing each .dll by hand? problem is that this font appears too big, not like in your desk( or i should download this haxrcorp and modify to all caps (fontcreator dont open this tipe).

okay. thank you!

rika(685):

oh... i thought it is something with the dialog and its buttons. well, it might be the problem with sp2 vs sp3 dll because it is ok on my computer. i can drag&drop files into folders etc...

here http://des.virtualplastic.net/mods.html#shutdown you can find info what you need to reshack and the resource bitmaps, so i recommend to reshack your sp2 dll instead of using the dlls on my deviantart page.

cheers des

ah, no i meant, the dialogs were okay. everything on the computer itself worked. however, after i installed those dialogue screens, i found out that my computer could no longer drag and drop files like it did normally. not buttons, but like files and folders. i couldn't drag files out of a regular folder onto the desktop or from the desktop to the recycle bin.

dragging and dropping the buttons? you cant do that in the original dialog neither. or can you? hmm... i dont know.

yes, the shut down and log off dialogs.

rika(681):

what menu? maybe it is just me, but i dont understand what menu are you talking about. don't you mean dialogs?

hello. i was hoping you could help me with something. when i tried installing the logon/logoff and shutdown menus, they installed fine. however, i had problems with dragging and dropping afterwards. i used replacer and my windows xp version was sp2. i wonder if maybe that's why it didn't work? i mean the menus were fine and everything worked fine except i couldn't drag and drop. any idea what the problem is?

i hope i didnt forget to change something else.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qhgzqa

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ixi1mo
thanks des

none(677):

yes, but if you want the original explorer.exe simply just extract it from the xp install cd. (in i386 folder, explorer.ex_. the command for this: expand x:\path\to\the\file\explorer.ex_ x:\destination\path\explorer.exe)

hi, a while ago you edited my explorer.exe to remove the icons in the taskbar. if i send it to you again, can you undo what you did?
thanks

hey sharer, could you share (lol) that theme please? :)

final)
http://sharer.p8.hu/uj.jpg

jaja. alakul. csak az ikonok nem kelleneének oda. :d vagy ha neked kellenek, akkor legalább én kicserélném őket valami kevésbé színes egyen ikonra. de persze ez csak tanács, hiszen a te desked.

mitmondasz? alakul? :)
http://sharer.p8.hu/untitled2.jpg

heh,. :) pont egy ilyen / ilyesmi style nekem is van/volt. régen amikor még kísérletezgettem, akkor csinátam egy ilyesmit is. lehet még megvan valahol.

szeva. ilyenre sikerült egyellőre az én saját témám + amit innét letöltöttem)
http://sharer.p8.hu/untitled.jpg

az egy részt nincs kész, mivel én nem használom azt a böszme nagy start menüt (eeew), szóval az a része nincs is befejezve. + e-miatt nem is elérhető sehol ez a vs. meg igazából az magamnak készült, szóval bocs, de azt nem adom. így marad egyedi az én deskem. :)

egyetlen egy valakinek adtam oda, de ő neki is azért mert, azt mondta készít belőle egy "változatot", de azóta sem jelentkezett. :(

des(668):
bocs én tévedtem, én az msstylodra gondoltam, ha lehetséges, de ha nem azsem baj)

hat itt van az oldalon is, több változatban. de amit én is használok, az ez: only details bottom taskpanel version 1

http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/shellstyle_details.zip
http://des.virtualplastic.net/mods.html#iconlessbottom

nincskedved megosztani velem a shellstylod? mertén már 1 ideje szenvedek eggyel de asszem jövő ilyenkorra megis csinálnám ha lenne annyi türelmem :d

igen. pontosan. :) minden dll, exe meg beállítás szépen el van rakva.
bár nálam egy windows amúgy is sokáig kitart. nem gányolom össze, mint egyesek.

persze ez a módszer megkövetel egyfajta kompromisszumot. e-miatt az updatek, frissítések tiltva vannak. de jól megvagyok nélkülük.

és mikor windows csere van csak replaceled a dlleket stb, registry és megvan ujból a saját kinézet. nagyon ok az egéssz, minden elismerés)

sima uxtheme hacket használok. (uxtheme.dll csere) szóval téma kezelő progi nincsen, mint pl a stylexp.

szóval nálam alapból van egy visualstyle (msstyle file), amit én csináltam egy már meglévőből. könnyebb így, mint az elejéről kezdeni az egészet. nagyjából ezzel a kinézet már adott, ehhez jöttek a különböző hackek, beállítások, hogy összhangban legyen minden. pl ikonok tiltása és törlése. (kivéve a tray ikonok), dialógusok kicsinyítése, stb. aztán az asztalon egy html fut, tele sok scripttel, szóval ikonok helyett úgy tudok programot indítani, mint ha egy weboldalon klikkelgetnék. igazából így sok dolgot meglehetne csinálni, animációk, effektek, mozgások, egyebek, de én ugye a minimalizmust itt is alkalmaztam, tehát semmi effekt a mouseover színváltáson kivül. :)

röviden ennyi. persze ez sok munka volt.

igazából az enyémtől vannak sokkal jobban kinéző desktopok, csak azok más technikával készültek. pl lite step, meg egyéb külső shellel, meg egy rakás más programmal. én meg inkább belülről alakítottam át az egészet. csak ebben különleges az én deskem. tehát hogy ezt mind tudja az xp alapból, amit látni lehet. igaz, rásegítéssel. :)

szerintem én is... nemtudom megosztanád e velem azt az infót hogy használsz e valamien windows téma felüiró külső programot? vagy hogy alakítottad át ennyire az xp-det? mert nagyon bejön, ha semmien külső program nemkell hozzá h fusson, mert szeretem ha minnél kevesebb program, vagy service fut a háttérben)

win xp pro. szerintem még évekig ezt fogom.

most mit használsz? win7?

sharer(659):

tetszik. régebben én is hasonlóra csináltam meg. small caption, meg stb, bár ettől valamivel nagyobb volt nekem annó. (mondjuk én csak eleve 3 oszlopot használok. volume, wave, aux)

sharer(658):
sharer.p8.hu/data/sndvol32.exe
a data könyvtár nagy betükkel data

szeva itt az én xp sp3 hang szabályzó mod-om, érdekel a véleményed.
sharer.p8.hu/data/sndvol32.exe

someone(656):

it is haxrcorp or standard 07_55 http://www.dafont.com/haxrcorp-s8.font

hello des, your desk is outstanding! could you share your font please... or send me standardcaps@gmail.com thanks.

hi des
thanks for the help. will head over there now and see if i can get it going
jerry

jerry hill(653):

you cannot save the file that is already in use. save as it somewhere else (desktop or anywhere) then use replacer to replace the file. http://www3.telus.net/_/replacer

i open syst32.dll and modify the font size.
i use recompile and then try to save the file.
windows says it can not create the new file.
where am i going wrong?
thanks jerry

john(651):

yeah. almost everybody moved on to win7. it is not surprising though. but from my observation ms made win7 even more less customizable in some parts. i mean i hate that big min,max,close buttons too. and cant even put those buttons closer to each other. (i asked a vs maker, and he said it is impossible. i hope there will be a hack for that later.)

see what i mean: http://i45.tinypic.com/25s1ic3.png - this can't be done because the ini file that we knew from xp is missing from win7 visualstyles. you know the padding, margin, etc values. i even took a look inside a win7 visualstyle and yes, unfortunately it is missing. there is no ini file inside. nothing but a bunch of bitmaps, png's. :(

i know that, there are a lot of uifiles inside the dlls which fortunately can be customized, and i just hope there is a value for that caption button thing. because i can't stand to look at it. it's ugly, ehh. :\

since i haven't tried win7 yet, just gathering informations ,i could be wrong about things.

hi des, just wanted to say that i moved on to windows 7.

i want to thank you for everything i learned from you and your site, these days i always look at apps/windows in a different way. like "hmm i could remove that..." ^^

anyways i wont tell you to abandon the good old xp, but take a look at 7 once in a while ;).

wish you well /john

merlin(649):

i don't use winrar (used for years back than though) but take a look at this: http://www.respower.com/page_tutorial_unrar

by changing the default command (open) in the registry could work, or combining it with vbscript + regtweak, but i don't know.

another solution, if you rightclick on a rar file, in the winrar sub menu (when cascading menu selected) there is an extract here or something like this.

usually i don't use proxy, only in some special cases. keep searching. :)

hi des,

a) do you know how to shorten the procedure of unzipping files? normally i have to double click a zip-file, my winrar program starts and i have to click again : "unzip in this folder". would it be possible to unzip files without starting this program? just double click on the file?

b) do you know a good american proxy server, so i can watch american videos on you tube. i have been trying some of them but it never worked well.

dokyun(647):

yes, but it is hardcoded into the dll. and i cant add new commands to it. don't forget that, without the source code we can do very limited things only.

i can only change the ones that are already there. in example. if you don't need the help and support center you can use that menu with your exe file by replacing the helpctr.exe. c:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\

and then if you select the help menu, your program will run.

i thought it would be possible to do so - that's what shell32.dll seems to do anyway.it just points to standalone executables like cleanmgr or dfrg but perhaps i am mistaken ?

think i'll just use the task manager shutdown, thanks though.

dokyun(644):

btw, i am working on a log-off / shutdown screen. it would be something like this: http://des.virtualplastic.net/logonui.png (not exactly)

dokyun(644):

unfortunately no. :(

hello des, i've got a question.

is there anyway to change the destination of the 'log off'/'turn off computer' shortcuts in the start menu ?

say i want it to point it to a third party software like shutoff or so [ i don't like the pallete limitations of the standard dialog].

i thought editing the msgina.dll would work...but i don't seem to understand how to state a program call [ if it's possible at all].

merlin(642):

hehe. i have seen that video before. it was funny in a way. :) (btw i live in the east side of hungary)

some installers could be opened with 7zip.
i found this about nullsoft installer: "currently nsis installers cannot be fully decompiled. the installer itself doesn't provide any method to extract files or the script without installation. it is the developer's choice whether the source code and/or the files for the installer are available to the public or not.

there are, however, external tools that allow this. 7-zip (version 4.40beta at the time of this writing) supports decompressing nsis installers compressed with lzma or bzip, but the source code is still partially compiled and requires extensive modification before the script can be recompiled. a decompression plug-in is also available for totalcommander."

source: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/can_i_decompile_an_existing_installer

hi des,

please have a look at this genius young lady: http://failblog.org/page/5/ in "contestant fail".

amazing! and they still believe they are the greatest nation on this planet! don't make me laugh! (by the way: do you live in bp?)

do you know how to extract a nullsoft installer so i could grab some avi- and ico-files from it? there is a new version of a program which i am not intended to install right now, but i would love to have a look at the updated files.

joshua(640):

try this: http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7htkq
there were some elements in it which ones don't belong there.

hey. i have another web page. what i would like help with is the nav text. for some reason the .css in the html doesnt seem to work, it wont display the style at all. can you have a look at it please?

here is the file
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4rjp15

sigma(638):

unfortunately it looks like all the toolbar icons are hardcoded into the exe. :( i hate this type of application. it juts can't be reshacked.

thanks for your help des. i want to change the toolbar icons of "xyplorer". can't find any rcdata or dll's though.

sigma(635):

when you open the exe with reshacker do you see rcdata resource? if yes, the icon or bitmap could be there in encoded format.

sigma(635):

what is that app? maybe it is in a dll not in the exe file.

i want to change some toolbar icons/bitmaps in a explorer like tool, but when i open the .exe with reshack i cant find any icons or bitmaps, any idea how i can accomplish this? thanks for your help!

oh sorry. i get it now.
it could be a string in a dll* and by deleting this string could work, but i don't know.
*in explorer.exe and shell32.dll or somewhere else.

des(632):
...no des...just delete permanently from the tree view in explorer window. look here please: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hfp4j2

...you mean you want to delete / hide this? winkey+r -> shell:controlpanelfolder

hi des, i have solved the winkey+"e" problem!

in order to get rid of control panel from the tree view in windows explorer i used this line in the regitry:

[hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\explorer]

"nosetfolders"=dword:00000001

now i changed this dword value to 0 and my explorer window appears again after hitting winkey +"e"! wooohoooo!! (is there another way to delete the control panel from explorer permanently?)

xp to win7 without 3rd party apps? without apps you will not get win7 like start menu, or win7 like "folder task bar" and so on... with only reshacking and hexediting it is impossible. you could use a win7 visualstyle and some other minor tweaks/hacks to mimic the win7 look a bit. but that is all.

btw for me the win7 design is a step back. some of the changes that they did just looks bad. in example; the min, max, close button is awful. + no classic start menu, only this giant gigantic menu. lol. no active desktop support. ... and more.

oh, i forgot the screenshot: http://i49.tinypic.com/2dt24ht.jpg

i am making progress here.... the difference is caused by the size of the winamp window. "1x" means original size ( 664x272). at this size the processor works is at 40-50%. and when i zoom the window so it fits the desktop, the processor usage rate falls to 20 % immediately. good to know. i have never seen this so obvious before. maybe it's because i normally have the full view option on which means the movie is on the whole desktop.

and in case you decide to customize windows xp to win7-look without any third party applications i would love to join you. (there are so many of those xp into win7-programs on the deviant art - but 95% are just that buggy you would not believe that). what about this idea?

winkey+e problem:
i remember i had this problem once. the solution was to reenable the explore command in regedit. here is a screesnhot of contextedit. (using contextedit is much safer)

if i disable the explore command (by unchecking "explore") i have parameter incorrect error if i use the winkey+e.

processor issue:
was the movie the same? because different videos have differrent video compressions.
more rams will not cause more cpu loads as far as i know.

... a small technical issue.... if you don't mind

i have a very simple laptop with only 512 mb ram. and having firefox, thunderbird, winamp and the vista sidebar open almost 85 % of my ram are used. opening notepad++ and a huge file is pretty hopeless then. well i got today a new 1024 mb module. i can see on my ram clock on the sidebar that now the same applications only use the half of my ram. good but....

i normally never complain about my celeron m processor. it is really fast enough for music, surfing the web and watching a movie. and while watching a movie it works at max 24%. now i am watching again a movie and the processor is working between 40-50% of his capacity. how is that? is there a connection between more ram and the work/power capacity of the processor? well as long as my fan does not spin like crazy and i do not hear it i would say i don't care. but unfortunately i do. can you explain this new hard work of the celeron mobile processor?

des(624):

thank you des, now i have "explorer" and "open" again in my context menu and both works fine, but hitting win-logo and "e" pops up still the error message.

i must admit that i tried a new program like qtabbar this week which does not need the .net environment but i quickly uninstalled it because it was not even as half handy and stable as qttabbar is, so i guess this could be the reason for this error message.

i assume there is a new key in the registry which causes the error message, too bad i have not the clue for what i am supposed to look for. maybe uninstalling and installing qttabbar again will help. let's hope.

merlin(623):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/tgw3si
it is from my secondary windows. (everything is default)
i hope this helps.

hi des,

i must confess i really have to stop deleting and changing things on my xp. sooner or later i will have to install at again and again...

when you click with the right mouse button on a folder you see in your context menu
"explorer" and "open". and since i never needed the open-option i opened registry editor and just deleted "open" key. now hitting win logo button and e gives me an error message instead of opening explorer. any idea how to get it work properly again?

thanks

merlin(621):

yes, i know that thing with the video and the screenshot. the screenshot contains a special color that is used by as "overlay" in video apps. (tv tuners, web cams, media players,..) i also can recreate that situation with my tv tuner card and the correct color on a screenshot.

it has something to do with overlay color or something.

hi des,

i was right about the winamp notifier. it is not a plug-in which would display the info but the notifier.maki (make a killer interface) file. i just got a new one from a guy who seems to be a winamp skinning pro. a little too late though. i found a new skin (after 5 years having the blue modern skin running on my desktop). and this one is able to show the notifier on 6 spots on the desktop. the only thing i still miss is the ability of showing the lyrics without making an online connection with 100 google-, yahoo- or aol-server around the globe. after 10 years of winamp development there is not even one lyrics plugin, which would only read the content of saved tags of a song. what a pity.

today i saw something funny on my desktop and i would like to ask you if you can explain it to me. i was watching a movie when i suddenly hit pause and made a screenshot. i saved it to my picture folder using paint.net. after that i kept watching but i wanted to be sure, that it worked properly. i opened explorer and the picture folder on my running winamp video window and on that spot where i had the thumbnail i could see the movie running in the background! the thumbnail was like a whole in explorer, so i could watch the movie through that whole? have you ever seen this? is it clear what i am trying to describe here? a whole in explorer? what the heck is this? at least i had a big lol after that....

merlin(618):

some date and time cpl hacks: http://des.virtualplastic.net/mods.html#timedate

it is possible to change the date text color. but if i am correct, only specified system colors can be used for that. and it depends on your system color configuration.

...sorry, i saved the file as bmp...it will take some seconds to load...

hi,

would you please have a look at this http://www.sendspace.com/file/hnmbhf

as you see i have changed the font colors in the active and inactive window. but now the days and the date in "timedate.cpl" are invisible. is it possible to get them back without changing the font colors for the entire system?

merlin(616):

i assumed this notifier is a plugin for the winamp. and i still assume it is. a plugin for displaying song info on desktop. isn't it? or is it built in feature? the skin is a different thing. but i don't know much about winamp higher than version 2.9.

des(615):
a dll plug-in? negative. this is what i found on the web:

"winamp users are able to customize their software skin. each skin is determined by two files: xml and maki file. xml file stores skin configuration data, while maki file, in essence, is a file with translated embedded codes. "

and there is a notifier.maki files in scripts-folder.

unfortunately, reshacker is not able to open a .maki file.

1.
sorry, i don't know.

2.
i assume this song notifier is a plugin for winamp. open the dll with reshacker and see what is inside. if there is an empty dialog it could be the "host" of the displayed image.

hi des,

a lot of good programs ask me while the install routine where i want this program to be installed: "all users" or "current user". well i always check "only for current user" since i am all users and current user in one person. unfortunately not all installers prompt me this so a lot of new applications "land" in "all users" folder. can i force windows to install all programs only for current user?

i know you do not know use winamp but maybe you can give me a hint regarding to the song notifier appearing in the right corner when a new song is played. as you saw on many screenshots of my desktop i do have the sidebar on the right side and that is why i would love to have the notifier in the center (above the taskbar). i tried "toaster" - nope. i also had a deep look at the xml files but found nothing according directly to the position of the png file (on which the artist and the album cover are displayed). i also mailed the guy who made the modern skin but he never replied. and the winamp forum says nothing about this issue. any idea?

yyeeahh(611):

thx. i am fine with xp now. but i will customize/hack win7 as soon as i install it. (2-3-4 years from now. i guess.) i am really fine with xp.

max(612):
as for editing windows 7 themes. try this forum: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showforum=243

or use reshacker, resedit, xn resource editor or cff explorer suite, to extract the image from the visualstyle. then you can edit the image and replace it with the new one.

hey dude hows it going
its really hard to search google for windows 7 themes
so i came here to ask - do you know how i can make (design) my own windows 7 themes ? i mean edit start button, taskbar, close x button etc etc

you are the best customize-master i'd ever seen. your desktop is perfect, and your work is great. don't stop. you need make it your job. what about customize hack windows 7?

being honest i do have a shortcut to the search companion: on my usb mouse. there is a button behind the wheel and it opens the search window in explorer (where i normally have my tree view) or it puts my cursor in the google search field while surfing the web.

the stupid thing about the search companion in explorer is, you cannot go back to the tree view. unless you go to menu and choose "folders". too much work! :-) thats why i prefer a separate search window i can close after having a look at the search results.

i know, neither am i.
but after that, you can uninstall the program, because this exe works independently from the autohotkey program. it will be just one exe file, couple of kb in size and works like notepad.exe or any similar apps, but this does only one thing; executes the search companion. think of it as a shortcut.

without hacking, i don't think it is possible. if the window doesn't save the position (in registry), then it can only be done with reshacking.

des(607):
... thanks again for your help. i don't want to install any additional programs because of one click.

but i still have one question: when i open a cpl.file or hit "winlogo+r" a small window pops up always in the same spot. the taskbar window is in the very left corner for example. is it possible (without hacking these files) to have all these windows in the middle of the display?

there is an application called autohotkey. with this, it is possible to write a script to use the f3 button (xp search. starting with the search panel, without the "what do you want to search?" panel). and this script can be converted to an exe. so basically you will have an exe as a shortcut to the search companion.

and you could use this exe instead of that script you just found.

merlin(605):
oooopps!!

i pasted the lines from the xml file and they are not displayed here. weird. do not try to understand my last post. lines from the xml file are missing there.

i better leave the search companion as it is. it is just one click more to do. not a big deal.

i copied the content of lcladvd.xml into lclsrch.xml and almost everything is fine but...

i cannot search because there is nothing in the combo box. normally there should be "c:"

these are the lines:


"suchen=search my note"



c:\ " this c: is missing i can type the searched file but hitting return has no function"


any idea...?

oh. it doesn't work, because there is no search button. :( but i am on it. maybe it can be done.

1.
yes. locate lcladvd.xml and copy its content into lclsrch.xml. you will have the advanced search panel instead of the "what do you want to search?" panel. :)

4.
it depends on what features, functions you want to use in active desktop / html desktop.

des(601):

well...

1) i found a script on the web. now i can start the search companion from my desktop using this qttabtaskbar. goooood! normally the search companion starts with a question: "what do you want to search?" i deleted a lot of crap i never needed from the xml files (according to your tutorial..:-) but i would like to know if it is possible to start the search with the second window where the searched file is typed in? btw thanks to qttab quick launch and the start button are gone!

2) my changed shellstyle looks good. thanks.

3) also the hint about explorer was a "bingo!". now i click on the icon and a new tab(!) in my explorer window is open. cool.

4) active desktop: i just wondered if it is possible to take all the sidebar into a html file and run it on my desktop. probably not, and if yes would be a hell of a job right?

merlin(600):

1.
i know only this shortcut: shell:::{2559a1f0-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}

2.
that color is connected to an other system color. i don't remember which one. desktop color, or selection color? i don't know.

3.
yes. copy the shellstyle.dll into system32 folder. (overwrite the old one)

4.
i dont know. it depends on your sidebar program, but i doubt it. and what exactly do you mean by run active desktop?

5.
in windows xp, the explorer has 2 states. normal explorer window view and the explorer view (with the tree bar on the left panel) i guess you just need to change the shortcut to explorer.exe in your sidebar. here are some explorer command line swithes: http://www.colba.net/~hlebo49/explorer.htm (bottom part of the page)

hi des,

1) do you know how to start the search companion using the start->run option?
2) there are frames/borders around pictures or icons when i use the thumbnail view. do you know how to get rid of this?
3) is it possible to get the bottom panel i had in the explorer window while using the classic view?
4) would it be possible to run "activate desktop" with my sidebar? (i mean without installing rainmeter)
5) i know there is a difference when i click on explorer.exe or go to startmenu->computer. (how is it called in the english version? in win7 it is just "computer"). well always when i click on a drive icon on my sidebar the "computer" window pops up instead of explorer. do you know how to change this?

thanks

hello. az elkovetkezo par sorban egy kezdemenyezest szeretnek neked bemutatni:

az elmult idoszakban azon gondolkodtam, hogy ideje lenne letrehozni egy magyar deskmodding kozosseget.

az eredeti elkepzeles szerint egy kis, de deskmoddingban jartas csapat kellene kezdesnek, aki segit, inspiraciokent szolgal a kezdo modderek szamara. az egesz egy galaxygui-hoz hasonlo phpbb3 motorra epulo forum lenne.

a kezdocsapat az eddigi allas szerin 5 emberbol all, akiknek eltero a "szakterulete"( van aki a rainmeterhez ert, van aki a visual stylok keszitesehez/szerkesztesehez) ez mellet egy jo adag esztetikaierzekkel is rendelkeznek (ami velemenyem szerint a legfontosabb a deskmoddingban).

tehat az lenne a kerdesem hogy lenne kedved ehhez a kezdo csapathoz tartozni? ha erdekel a dolog az outwork69@gmail.com email cimen megtalalsz:d

des(597):

exactly! :-)

yes i have exactly 296 reshacker script files in a folder and all i needed was an idea how to delete
"-modify "avis...
"-modify "bms..." so i would only change the icons. and again i have to thank you - notepad++ does it!!! look at the picture: http://www.sendspace.com/file/x0yt88. this is the modified shell32.dll. and the blue popup window is my new discovery from qt tabbar. it is called qttab desktoptool. double click somewhere on the desktop or taskbar and you have all your most important files or programs one click away! startmenu and quicklaunch are dead! :-) i even can use my forward and back buttons on my mouse while browsing in windows explorer. that's why there are no arrows on the toolbar menu. and there is another great feature i found out.
normally i had to go to folder options and enable "show system files" and "show hidden files". now i only have to click on the icon on the toolbar and i can see all system and hidden files on the cascading menu but not in the right window of explorer. so i will never need folder options again. qttabbar does a great job!

well des thanks again and see you soon! :-)

oh. so you have 200 txt files (reshacker script) and you want delete certain lines from all of them? (leaving only the modify icons command)

there is notepad++ which one has replace text in multiple files capability or something like that. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

merlin(595):

disable balloontips, not tooltips:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/disableall.reg

btw, here is a huge collection of win xp tweaks: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

look for reshacker script documentations or forums on google. i never used reshacker script. i reshacked every file by one by one. (~300 files) because i did more reshacks than just changing the icon and that couldn't be scripted this way.

hi des,

as i mentioned the other day i reinstalled xp and use now a classic style. a screenshot of my (very colorful) desktop here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6cvn9z.

what i still have not fixed are all these annoying balloontips. (i know you like them i do not need them - be gone!). well look at the reg-file please:http://www.sendspace.com/file/jh2av4. yes i restarted my computer and they still appear. do you know how to get rid of them?

your hint about "recycle bin off the desktop but not explorer" was fine. it works! thanks bro.

now i would like to ask you something and i hope my english is good enough to explain it. let's see.

i used to install a program which customized the xp luna look into windows 7. rougly speaking it worked like this. there was a folder:

folder "win7"

- reshacker
- replacer
- 1.bmp
- 2.ico
- 3.avi
- folder old( for example shell32.dll)
- folder new (for the modified file)
- shell.dll.txt

and the text file would look like this (is only an example)
" reshacker script

exe old: shell32.dll
exe new: new_shell32.dll
log file: shell32.dll.log

modify ... with 1.bmp
modify ... with 2.ico
modify ... with 3.avi"

and replacer would do the rest of the job replacing all these modified files. can you follow this? now my wish/idea would be to only change the old-fashioned icons with the new win7 ones. well this should not be a problem while changing some icons within one file. but in that win7 program about 200 (!) files are modified! so almost every program, every cpl-, ocx-,dll-file would get new icons.

now my question: is it possible to write a script which would do like this:

1. for i=1 to i=200
2. open the *.textfile.
3. delete "modify bitmap", "modify avi", "modify whatever" but do not touch "modify icons"!
4. repeat

i would like to have the text files only with "modify icons", so i would change only the icons of all these 200 programs.

... is there hope for such a script des? :-)

1.
i would say use the group policy editor (gpedit.msc), but since you have xp home edition, this isn't an option.

but here is a regtweak for that: hide recycle bin on desktop - not from explorer >
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/hiderecyclebindesktop.reg

2.
these required c++ files are starting with msvc.... like msvcr70.dll, msvcr71.dll, msvcrtd.dll... etc. so msvcr50.dll or msvcr60.dll or msvcr80.dll and so on.. version 2005, 2006, etc.

i don't know if it's possible that you want. i just gathered "all of them" and copied to my sytem32 folder.

i am aware of that the winsxs folder in vista and win7 takes a lot of space. afaik these files are not files, but hard links. actually the size of winsxs folder is "fake". the windows just reports that it's 5-6 gb but actually it is only couple of mb's. or something similar.

well... i hoped and failed :-( yes i really reinstalled xp on my hp laptop. looks good and feels good. but now i have some short questions:
1) i got rid of my recyclebin icon from the desktop. but this one in windows explorer is also gone. how am i supposed to delete it from desktop but not from explorer without using tweakui?
2) are you familiar with c++ redistributable files? a lot of programs need them but every program needs a different version. i just would like to avoid having...
c++ redistributable 2005
c++ redistributable 2006
c++ redistributable 2008... is it possible to install the latest version (2008 sp1) and force all these programs to use it instead of installing all this old crap?
by the way...my winsxs folder has now 20 mb total size. yesterday i was in a computer shop and had a close look at some notebooks with windows 7. guess how big is the winsxs folder on windows 7? between 5-6 gb!!!! gosh!!! i think people who buy win7 becomes a 40 tonnes truck just to get a bottle of water from the next shop...:-d

try anothe usb port and/or remove (uninstall) the yellow question mark in device manager, restart and hope. :)

i also tried to expand the hidusb.sy_ from /i386 on the recovery cd to the drivers folder:

expand e:\i386\hidusb.sy_ c:\windows\system32\drivers\hidusb.sys.

so technically i do have all you listed. but i still get the message, that the device cannot be used because there is no software for that.

des(589):
... well i do have both .cab files and this hid.dll in the c:\system32 folder. the problem is the hidusb.sys file is missing! :-(
can i just copy it from the recovery cd?

have you tried to remove the device (from the usb port) then reconnect again after restarting windows? usually windows finds the new devices automatically.

make sure you have 2 files in c:\windows\driver cache\i386\ driver.cab sp2.cab or sp3.cab.

my usb optical mouse have these files in system32/drivers folder: hidusb.sys, hidparse.sys, hidclass.sys + hid.dll in system32 folder.

today i could use some real help. i am afraid i deleted a content of a windows folder and now my usb mouse does not work anymore. all other usb devices are o.k. (walkman, usb-stick). in the devicemanager window i do have a question mark and "usb receiver" and when i click on "search for driver" i would get the message "driver was not found on that system". normally i do not need any driver for usb devices since i run xp with sp2. do you have any idea what file might be missing?

merlin(586):

or you could try to find an alternative to that program.

des(585):
...well since the manifest idea does not work, i am afraid i will have to catch up with a new version of that program or just close one eye while running it...:-) thanks again

ms works3.jpg:
i don't know the solution but i have 2 more tips.
- use wksslng.dll.manifest file inside the folder, and see what happens.
- if it possible, update the software. maybe in a newer version this problem is fixed.

ms works4.jpg:
i don't know, but i don't think so.

... and on this one please...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/16p57u

hello,

would you please have a look at this:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/56nihq

oh. i see you figured it out. :)

merlin(579):

1. check the dll's too.

1. it works for me. i guess because you did it wrong. 38003000300000 = 800
there is an f before the number 8 then 2 zeros which in this case it is 30. because hex 30 means 0. you know. and the end of the 800 it is not a dot but a zero. (00)

i got it!

yeah!.... next time you must teach me how to change text in a hexeditor. first of all i changed the text on the right side and put "." between the letters. and theses dots got "2e" hex value on the left side. so i had to change these "2e" to "00" to get it worked. goood! then i figured out that there must be a space " " between the words (like in "picture resizer") and i had only a "." again and that why i got these stupid squares. also the resolution had to be corrected. instead of 1280x800 into 800x1280. now it works! :-) gracias!

1.

a) ms works wordpad -> reshack -> no bitmaps at all ->the program displays the toolbarbackground and icons correctly (even after minimizing and maximizing again)

b) ms works exel -> reshack -> bitmaps are there but not these i see when the program is running -> like i said, i assume the toolbarbitmaps/icons are somewhere in a .dll

http://www.sendspace.com/file/q76mxv

p.s. oh..after i opened both programs i discovered manifest files within them. too bad they are not working...

2.

such a tiny program - such a big pain! :-(
first of all thanks for your hints. well guess what i got after changing the english text to german: exactly! a lot of □□□□□□□□□!!!!!!!
i saw them today as well after i wrote a small batch-file (dir /s /b ->list.txt). instead of c:\...\startmenü i saw c:\...\startmen□.

also there is the default resolution 1200x1024, which i changed to 1280x800 and what i see in th pop-up window? ".800 x 1280" and this error message "these must be numbers dude!" whooohooo! like i said...such a tiny program...

merlin(577):

1.
no no. by toolbarbitmap i meant something like this: http://i47.tinypic.com/2nk5kes.jpg
if this is not in the correct format, that could cause something like that.

2.
oh. i thought you want to do something different.

phototoysclone.dll
hex 52006500730069007a0065 = resize pictures @ offset 59dc. rename it to german.

hex 31003000320034 @ 5af8 = 1024 + 1200 text. rename it to your screen resolution and this will be the default value.

des(576):

1. ms works (exel+word).
i opened exel (wksss.exe) using reshacker and found no tollbar bitmaps. (btw..both programs - exel and word - use the toolbarbitmap from the .msstyles. the problem is that exel does not display it correctly as the word does). i even did not find the toolbar icons in that .exe-file. i bet they hide somewhere in one of these 50 .dll's in works programfiles folder....:-(

2. the program is called imageresizer-2.0.msi. i found a dll which seems to be easy to hack. there is also that pop-up window within. have a look at this please. maybe you could change it so i will not have to type the display's resolution everytime i want to change a picture's size. and the english name "resizepictutre" was there but only as caption name for the window but not for the contextmenu.
download is here:http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/release/projectreleases.aspx?releaseid=26281

merlin(575):

1.
it seems the toolbar bitmap is not in the correct 24 or 32bit format. try to reshack the toolbar bitmap in ms word. save the bitmap, open it with an image editor, and change the color quality to 24bit or 32bit. also you might have to recolor the grey background part to the magic pink color. (#ff00ff)

2.
msi file is an installer file so that is not the file we need in this case. after installing this, somewhere there must be extracted a dll file (shell extension dll). check c:\windows\system32\shellext folder or your profile folder (in documents and settings) there must be somewhere. in some cases it's located in system32 folder.

it would be help if you just tell me the name of the program, so i can install it and see where is this file located.

your second request is not possible. (=resolution size directly in the first line) at least i don't know if it is possible to do that with hacking.

3.
since i am iconless, i don't know, don't remember.
download icon extractor, scan for icons, and change every occurrence of that icon.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iconsext.html

4.
i don't use wireless connection so i don't know where is the correct icon. again, do a scan for icons, and change all of them. (the correct icon could be in xpsp2res.dll, xpsp3res.dll, shell32.dll, netshell.dll)

hi,

i have a lot of questions today des... are you ready? let's roll...:)

1) i have been using ms works, especially these exel-like and word-like programs. unfortunately all these good guys in redmond forgot to put a manifest-file in the folder so ms works would use the comctl32.dll from the winsxs folder. well i did it and look what happened. any idea why?
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5e1gtm

2) i used to use a program to resize the size of pictures i download from the internet to fit my display (1280x800). today i found a tiny program (.msi-file) which does exactly the same. but: in the contetxmenu i have the english name "resize pictures" - i'd like it in german - but i cannot find anything neither in programfiles folder nor in the registry. then, if i check "resizepictures" a small windows pops up and i have to click "advanced" and click "custom" and type the display's resolution. is it possible to hack this .msi file, so i would have my resolution size directly in the (first line?) of the pop-up window?

3) do you know how to change the icons of "c:\...\downloaded program files" and "c:\...\historyie"? there are no desktop.ini files in those folders, not even hidden.

4) when you looked at my icons i had changed them. but the wlan icon in the taskbar seems not to be the right one. always when i restart my wlan connection i see for one second this wlan-icon and then it changes to this standard internet connection sign. do you know how to get the (real) wlan icon?

thanks...

merlin(573):

no. unfortunately that type of message window is using a msgbox window template and this one is hardcoded into the windows. it is not a resource type dialog like the delete, move, copy... dialog.

could be possible to hexedit it, but i am afraid that other dialogs using this template will be gone too.

... a short note according to these □□ in my explorer. i found out that they show up after selecting folders and files. as long as i only have folders and select them by hitting ctrl+a i see clean text without any □.

btw: in almost every windows folder there is at least one hidden file (desktop.ini for example). when i select the content of a folder i always get this annoying message "in this folder there is a hidden file. please go to folder options and enable "show hidden files". do you know how to turn this message off?

hmm... in fonts, the first character in the char table has this square always. it is the notdefined character. remove it with a font editor. that square is actually a character but the font can't display it, because it is undefined in its chartable or something, so it shows that square character instead of nothing.

des(570):
yep...i just changed the font to tahoma and saw the same stupid squares. meanwhile i would say you were right by pointing out it could be there because two lines are forced in one. now the shell32.dll looks like this:

31364, "%ld items selected."
31365, " "

and i still see two squares after "selected"....

o.k. thanks man.

merlin(569):

maybe it's a font problem. have you tried with another font? worth a try.

... i am going to leave it.. no matter what i do in the shell32 i always get these stupid squares...

des(567):
...oopps!

now i see there:

"14 items selected. totalsize:□□□□□□□□@1" :-(

merlin(566):

ehh. :d

which file? i guess explorer.exe. but it is not that simple. without knowing the source code of the windows, you can change minor things only. knowing and having the source code, that would be amazing. we could do a lot of amazing hacks, tweaks.

but you could try merging those lines into one line.

original:
31364, "%ld items selected."
31365, "total file size: %ls"

try something like this:
31364, "%ld items selected, total file size: %ls"
31365, ""

des(565):
... lol ... obviously you have no sense of humor.

by saying that i just wanted to know which file reads the content of the shell32 numbers in the stringtable and puts it on the bottom of the explorer, so i see there "10 items selected.##totalsize:45mb" for example.

do you know des which program or file reads the stringtable number in the shell32.dll and displays them on the explorer? if i knew that i maybe could put the second line under the first one without having these weird signs....

merlin(564):

what? where did you see that line? (please open shell32.dll...)

des(563):
well.... as far for the triangles i solved the problem by changing the bitmaps. instead of triangles now i have a "+" and "-". looks good and works good! :-)

do you know where is the orderline which says:" please open shell32.dll, then go to stringtable 1961 and get me the content of number 31364 and 31365. i am going to put these two lines in one"? maybe we could put the second line under the first one or just delete it. the total file size here is not correct so i could give up that line.

triangles: i don't know what's causing it.

squares: check shell32.dll -> stringtable 1961 -> if the german equivalent of
31364, "%ld items selected." and 31365, "total file size: %ls"
is ok, and there is no mistypes or weird characters there. but i guess that is a bug caused by forcing 2 line text into 1 line text. and that 2 squares are actually line break signs or something.

total size: i already tried to achieve that, but i couldn't. i even tried to do that in the caption bar (title bar).

hi,

would you please have a look at the picture below:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mwopx8

thanks...

merlin(560):

why is it so important to delete your image? but ok, it is none of my business. at least, next time use sendspace.com or whatever but not rapidshare. (yes, there is a delete link in most of the file sharing services)

just change everything to 90. from 8bff55... until you see 9090909090.
or if that doesn't work, change everything to 90 from a16000.... until you see 9090909090.

http://des.virtualplastic.net/user32_dll_focusrect.png

hello,

i am trying to get rid of the small rectangle. i found the "drawfocusrect" line and typed the numbers from the whole column into hex editor. it also found the typed hex value. unfortunately my hex values look different from yours. how am i supposed to change them now?
http://rapidshare.com/files/309318598/user32.jpg.html


p.s. please do not yell at me for uploading my files using rapidshare. have some patience, drink a coffee or whatever. :-)

thank you for your swift help

merlin(557):

no. since you mentioned this qttabbar has a lot of features/functions but you only need one (the search function) my first idea was it could be possible to "install" only that one, if it were like a plugin, extension for the explorer. (different dll for different functions. like a toolbar extension for explorer or for iexplorer)

but it seems it is not the case here. is this the only app for this? for the vista like search.

des(556):

is this what we have been looking for?

in the old manual i found "... this software uses bandobjectlib..."

have a look at this site please http://www.codeproject.com/kb/shell/dotnetbandobjects.aspx

merlin(555):

well. i don't know. maybe this because it is a .net program. or we just can not find any qttabbar related files.

des(554):

nope :-( nothing. not a word. i had a look in the registry, like i said, there are a lot of entries. and one file appears almost always together with any qt... values: mscoree.dll. it is a part of .net 2.0.

you cannot deactivate qt tabbar only uninstall.
there are also a lot of libraries in .\hkey_classes_root\...

and this from the folder i started it:

[hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\.netframework\v2.0.50727\ngenservice\roots\interop.shdocvw, version=1.1.0.0, culture=neutral, publickeytoken=78a0cde69b47ca25\2]
"status"=dword:00000005
"scenario"=dword:00000020
"config"="c:/windows/nlite/qttabbar_1.2.2.1"
"imagelist"=hex:02,00,00,00,01,5b,59,e0,92,18,47,6f,36,a1,44,b9,cb,a1,90,5d,65,\
05,00,00,00,a6,00,00,00,49,00,6e,00,74,00,65,00,72,00,6f,00,70,00,2e,00,53,\
00,48,00,44,00,6f,00,63,00,56,00,77,00,2c,00,20,00,56,00,65,00,72,00,73,00,\
69,00,6f,00,6e,00,3d,00,31,00,2e,00,31,00,2e,00,30,00,2e,00,30,00,2c,00,20,\
00,43,00,75,00,6c,00,74,00,75,00,72,00,65,00,3d,00,6e,00,65,00,75,00,74,00,\
72,00,61,00,6c,00,2c,00,20,00,50,00,75,00,62,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,4b,00,65,\
00,79,00,54,00,6f,00,6b,00,65,00,6e,00,3d,00,37,00,38,00,61,00,30,00,63,00,\
64,00,65,00,36,00,39,00,62,00,34,00,37,00,63,00,61,00,32,00,35,00,00,00,00,\
01,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,32,e6,f7,03,c1,14,f3,a9,71,cb,e7,06,\
58,6e,36,55,05,00,00,00,98,00,00,00,6d,00,73,00,63,00,6f,00,72,00,6c,00,69,\
00,62,00,2c,00,20,00,56,00,65,00,72,00,73,00,69,00,6f,00,6e,00,3d,00,32,00,\
2e,00,30,00,2e,00,30,00,2e,00,30,00,2c,00,20,00,43,00,75,00,6c,00,74,00,75,\
00,72,00,65,00,3d,00,6e,00,65,00,75,00,74,00,72,00,61,00,6c,00,2c,00,20,00,\
50,00,75,00,62,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,4b,00,65,00,79,00,54,00,6f,00,6b,00,65,\
00,6e,00,3d,00,62,00,37,00,37,00,61,00,35,00,63,00,35,00,36,00,31,00,39,00,\
33,00,34,00,65,00,30,00,38,00,39,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00



i am sorry but i cannot help you so you can help me... :-(

interesting. is this qttabbar an always running application? is it there in task manager's process list?

merlin(552):

yeah. but that is for larger files, not for image files. i always have to wait like now. quote: "there are no more download slots available for free users right now. if you don't want to become a premium member, you might want to try again later."

and that annoying 1 minute and 15 minutes waiting time before i can download. so this is not for images.

des(551):

this is all i found about qt tabbar:
http://rs369.rapidshare.com/files/308355076/qt_tabbar_folder.jpg

(here i can delete uploaded files... no need to keep them on the web)

merlin(549):

hehe. yeah, i am hungarian. :)

1.
it is not possible. why don't you use a visualstyle that looks like windows classic? do a search for window classic visualstyle on google or devart. i am sure there are some. maybe not exactly the same but you can alter it to look more like windows classic.

2.
the qttabbar installation folder must be somewhere. but could be under different name too. do a search for "qtt". (in documents and settings, or in windows folder)

as far as i know you can't delete uploaded images.

joshua(548):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/884x8n
just change the red and blue color to whatever you want. (class: header, and main)

des(547):

hello magyar guy! :-) i must admit you are much better than google!

1) i had a look at the marlett.tff. exactly! these old-fashioned, ugly signs are in there. i also tried to modify it. no way! would it be possible to link the xp to .msstyle file to get all the proper bitmaps ( buttons, close, help...)?

2) as far for the qt tabbar program, have a look at the picture please... http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/299/qttabbar.jpg

i find the tab idea really great - now i only have one explorer window open. and the picture preview is pretty handy. but there is no folder in c:\programfiles. there is a property window, where you can change a bunch of things. that's all. :-(

p.s. how am i supposed to delete the imageshack file?

ok, i found a site i like, so no need to help make from scratch. im having one problem though. the table border. i want to make it all one solid color. currently it has shaded, highlights etc. can you help with that? below is the html if you can.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3tv35n

merlin(546):

there is no windows classic msstyle in the system. what bitmaps? the close buttons, minimize, maximize glyphs are in marlett.ttf font. all the bitmaps/icons used by the system are in the system files.

there are plenty of disassemblers, but i use hdasm. http://hdasm.narod.ru
you need the offsets in hexeditor not in disassembler.

unfortunately in the shellstlye panel can not be used custom links.

unfortunately this qttabbar requires .net framework, which i don't have and never intended to install, and never will. the feature you need, it could be a shell extension in qttabbar folder and could be possible to use independently from the whole install. i don't know but it is worth a try. what files (all) are in the qttabbar folder? show me a list.

or upload the installed(!) qttabbar folder for me. maybe i could dig something out of it.

hi,

i wonder why i still get a lot of error messages in windows95 look. for example when my battery is low, or i just hit the power button and some programs are still running. is there a windows classic.msstyles at all? where are all the bitmaps for that classic look? (or that safe mode look). do you know it?

by the way... i was trying to apply some hack ideas of yours, so i downloaded a trial version of pe explorer and got pretty stuck. how am i supposed to find out the offset number using the disassembler? the number shown on the left will not match any number within the file logonui.exe opened with hex editor. i would appreciate some help here. thanks.

by the way (2). you were right. all the lines between the bars are just colors within the msstyles file. i found them using stylebuilder.

by the way (3). according to your "iconic top taskpanel with details" tutorial. would it be possible to make such a taskpanel but with tabs as substitution for the favorites folder? so i could get rid of the menubar and would have all my favorites under the adressbar. (like in firefox)

by the way(4). some time ago i downloaded vista to get checked if it runs on my laptop. and i found two things i felt in love immediately. in explorer there is a search bar, so i can search within folders without going to startmenu and hitting search. i do have such a search field in my explorer but it is a part of a huge program called qttabbar and i only need this one feature! would it be possible to hack/program such a working search field on xp? (a lot of those search fields on deviantart are just fake:-)

joshua(544):

well. i don't know. i could try, but i am not a (web) designer. and i don't use ps.

hello,

if i were to create a website design in ps, could you help me create it?

those lines could be simple colors too. 3d border colors in registry: buttonshadow, buttondkshadow, buttonlight, buttonhilight in hkey_current_user\control panel\colors. (system wide changes)

in firefox those can be hided/recolored with userchrome.css. i don't know which values you should change but i guess it is defined "borders" or separators.

.... would you please have a look at this picture:
http://flahorn.deviantart.com/art/jadaero-1-4-56867320

there is this explorer window i really like because there are no lines between the titlebar, menubar, toolbar and other bars. i also have the lines between the bars on my firefox when i look at it right now. i cannot find them in the msstyles. do you know which program is "responsible" for those lines?

des(540):

well... thanks a lot for all your help.

merlin(538):

1.
hmm. the first idea that came to my mind is duplicate the shimgvw.dll and do some regtweak and make a compare right click menu item on image types. so when you open normally a picture the shimgvw.dll would be used, but when you right click an other picture and select compare, the shimgvw2.dll would be used and there would be 2 separate windows. i suppose it could work, but i don't know.

2.
i don't know. i only used the "magic pink" color.

3.
maybe it is because that program is just ignoring the manifest file. (as i said the "poorly" constructed programs before.)

4.
i guess it is something safety thing in xp or i don't know. you are admin (merlin) but safe mode is "safe mode" you know. i am also admin and single user on my system.

des(537):

it works! coooool... thanks man! no icons in the taskbar...

des(536):
i am thinking right now about two challenges i have been looking for on the web but have never found a solution. maybe you can help me a step further...

when i click on a picture in my explorer window a picture and fax viewer is started. (i hope this is the english name for that). when i click again on another picture i see this picture in the same window. my question is: is it possible to open this viewer as often as often i click on different pictures so i could compare two or three images at the same time (i know it works that way on vista).

is it possible to use bitmaps with alpha channel hacking the msstyle file? it works for some buttons or glyps. but what about the frame of explorer? or the taskbar or ... or... or... :-)

thanks for your links. unfortunately none of these programs was able to change the button look of my synaptics driver config programm. :-( i am going to send them an e-mail, maybe it helps.

and the last question (for today :-). i use xp home edition so i am user and admin in one person. i thought i was! when i start windows in safe mode i have to choose between administrator or merlin. why is that? i thought this would be one person? in case i choose admin and start windows normally again i have a new account on my disk: administrator. how am i supposed to be admin and user in one person?

hacked explorer: http://www.sendspace.com/file/h0hi95

original data:
at offset 192b0 = 31
at offset = 192ee = 30

hacked data:
at offset 192b0 = 9f
at offset 192ee = 40

merlin(534):

my hack with bigger icons on taskbar is not ready yet. the icons are pixelated sometimes. need to fix that. the no text only icons on taskbar tweak can be done with a simple registry tweak. but also need to fix the pixelated issue with big icons first if you want this with big icons.

you can get icons closer to each other with a simple regtweak. (only with icon view! doesn't work with details or list view) iconspacing and iconverticalspacing in hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics or display properties > appearances > advanced > icon spacing

in case if you did something wrong, try this:

xp visual styler 1.1
http://www.soft32.com/download_78741.html

xp style hacker 1.0
http://www.softpedia.com/get/system/os-enhancements/xp-style-hacker.shtml
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/xp_style_hacker/xpstylehack.html

xpme
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/xpme/xpme.html

des(533):
here comes my explorer: http://rapidshare.com/files/307367692/explorer.exe.html
would you please let me know what and where you changed something so i can do it on my own in the future?

and what about having bigger icons on the buttons in the taskbar? like in the quick launch? and what about having no text on the buttons only big icons like on win7? :-) ...sorry for sooooo many wishes...:-)

a short question: is it possible to get the icons in an explorer window closer to each other, so i could have three columns instead of two without making the window bigger.

merlin(532):

is the manifest file the one from my site? this manifest trick works in most of the cases, but with some programs it doesn't. old applications or poorly constructed programs sometimes simply don't run, when this manifest file is in their folder. and in some other cases it doesn't work at all.

the explorer.exe.manifest file is for few other things.

+ one tip:
for pictures do not use file sharing service. (like rapidshare) use image hosting services instead like tinypic.com, imageshack.us or any free image hosting, then use (copy here) the direct link to the image.

des(531):

good morning... i am asking you to first have a look at the picture i just uploaded at rapidshare. http://rapidshare.com/files/307272128/synaptics_driver.jpg.html

as you see, this is my synaptics driver (for my hp touchpad). i do have a manifest file in the folder but i still get the windows95 buttons. i also replaced the old comctl32 (ver5) with the new one (ver6) using replacer.cmd but it won't work at all. also the whole setup procedure shows only the old buttons. many program use the windows95 buttons when they show me an error message - like i.e. winamp. and yes i do have a manifest explorer file but it does not change a thing :-( any ideas how to get rid of it?
thanks

sendspace.com, rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. :)

des(529):

i apologize in advance but how am i supposed to upload my explorer.exe? you don't want me to copy and paste the exe-file from the hex-editor, do you?

merlin(528):

yeah. most of the hacks work only with xp (professional) sp2 eng or sp3 eng. but in most of the cases it is for sp3 eng. the task bar icon removal hack can only be done with hexeditor.

send me (upload) the explorer.exe file and i will do it for you tomorrow. i just hope my windows will not crash while i use your file. :)

thank you for your answer. being honest i find your homepage great, the only problem is that your tricks and ideas do not work on my "hacked" german xp sp2. either i cannot find the right offset-number or the hex :-( for example i tried to get rid of the icons on the buttons on my taskbar. i did like you said and what happened: the icons were still there but some millimeters below their normal position. is there an another way to apply your great hack-ideas? could i get this changed using i.e. reshacker?

merlin(526):

i don't think it is possible because it is a program specified setting / option.

the explorer.exe and those applications that are using the bitmap from the msstyle are actually using toolbarwindow32 class as a menu bar which can be styled that way. but notepad, mspaint, reshacker and the others aren't, so those can't be styled that way. :( it is just the way those programs were created.

and i don't think it is possible to hexedit / alter the program to achieve that you want. (i could be wrong... but even if it possible, i don't know how to do that)

hi!
in programs like windows explorer.exe, firefox, thunderbird... there is a bitmap behind the menubar (file edit....). this bitmap is in the msstyles (toolbarbackground.bmp). no problem to change this. but! a lot of programs (like mspaint, notepad, reshacker..) have only a color instead of this bitmap. is it possible that every program would have the same bitmap in the menubar?
thank you

here is a visualstyle with that font.
http://invaderjohn.deviantart.com/art/mnlstk-vs-94538135?offset=80

you should try a visualstyle with that haxrcorp font and see if it is ok. if it's still not working there must be something wrong with your system.

i am out of ideas.

des(522):
ehhh! didnt help

don't add .ttf! only the font name without the extension.

newb09(518):

i tryed but nothing... same as before mb i did something wrong http://i36.tinypic.com/28qymf5.png one thing i noticed there http://i34.tinypic.com/29er8yc.png should be font name by default or no?

why this is so hard to do.... i tryed install/uninstall lots of different fonts and result is the same http://i35.tinypic.com/1eurnd.jpg im tired already!

i don't know. :(

try this. in regedit, go to hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics you will see captionfont, menufont, mesagefont, etc. open and edit those binary values directly in regedit. it is in hex format, so be careful. there are lines: 0000, 0008, 0010, 0018, etc. and the last line is 0058 and contains 00 00 00 00.

edit all font names (see picture), log off, and re-logon to see if it is working or not.
here is a pic > http://i35.tinypic.com/2psm7vm.png

do you see your font name here?
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\fonts

yes

[hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\fonts]
"small fonts (vga res)"="smaller.fon"
"arial (truetype)"="arial.ttf"
"arial bold (truetype)"="arialbd.ttf"
"arial bold italic (truetype)"="arialbi.ttf"
"arial italic (truetype)"="ariali.ttf"
"courier new (truetype)"="cour.ttf"
"courier new bold (truetype)"="courbd.ttf"
"courier new bold italic (truetype)"="courbi.ttf"
"courier new italic (truetype)"="couri.ttf"
"lucida console (truetype)"="lucon.ttf"
"lucida sans unicode (truetype)"="l_10646.ttf"
"times new roman (truetype)"="times.ttf"
"times new roman bold (truetype)"="timesbd.ttf"
"times new roman bold italic (truetype)"="timesbi.ttf"
"times new roman italic (truetype)"="timesi.ttf"
"wingdings (truetype)"="wingding.ttf"
"symbol (truetype)"="symbol.ttf"
"symbol 8,10,12,14,18,24 (vga res)"="symbole.fon"
"verdana (truetype)"="verdana.ttf"
"verdana bold (truetype)"="verdanab.ttf"
"verdana italic (truetype)"="verdanai.ttf"
"verdana bold italic (truetype)"="verdanaz.ttf"
"arial black (truetype)"="ariblk.ttf"
"comic sans ms (truetype)"="comic.ttf"
"comic sans ms bold (truetype)"="comicbd.ttf"
"impact (truetype)"="impact.ttf"
"georgia (truetype)"="georgia.ttf"
"georgia bold (truetype)"="georgiab.ttf"
"georgia bold italic (truetype)"="georgiaz.ttf"
"georgia italic (truetype)"="georgiai.ttf"
"franklin gothic medium (truetype)"="framd.ttf"
"franklin gothic medium italic (truetype)"="framdit.ttf"
"palatino linotype (truetype)"="pala.ttf"
"palatino linotype bold (truetype)"="palab.ttf"
"palatino linotype bold italic (truetype)"="palabi.ttf"
"palatino linotype italic (truetype)"="palai.ttf"
"tahoma bold (truetype)"="tahomabd.ttf"
"trebuchet ms (truetype)"="trebuc.ttf"
"trebuchet ms bold (truetype)"="trebucbd.ttf"
"trebuchet ms bold italic (truetype)"="trebucbi.ttf"
"trebuchet ms italic (truetype)"="trebucit.ttf"
"webdings (truetype)"="webdings.ttf"
"estrangelo edessa (truetype)"="estre.ttf"
"gautami (truetype)"="gautami.ttf"
"latha (truetype)"="latha.ttf"
"mangal (truetype)"="mangal.ttf"
"mv boli (truetype)"="mvboli.ttf"
"raavi (truetype)"="raavi.ttf"
"shruti (truetype)"="shruti.ttf"
"tunga (truetype)"="tunga.ttf"
"sylfaen (truetype)"="sylfaen.ttf"
"courier 10,12,15 (vga res)"="courer.fon"
"ms sans serif 8,10,12,14,18,24 (vga res)"="sserifer.fon"
"ms serif 8,10,12,14,18,24 (vga res)"="serifer.fon"
"tahoma (truetype)"="tahoma.ttf"
"microsoft sans serif (truetype)"="micross.ttf"
"global monospace"="globalmonospace.compositefont"
"global user interface"="globaluserinterface.compositefont"
"global serif"="globalserif.compositefont"
"global sans serif"="globalsansserif.compositefont"
"kartika (truetype)"="kartika.ttf"
"lucida sans regular (truetype)"="lsans.ttf"
"lucida sans demibold roman (truetype)"="lsansd.ttf"
"lucida sans demibold italic (truetype)"="lsansdi.ttf"
"lucida sans italic (truetype)"="lsansi.ttf"
"vrinda (truetype)"="vrinda.ttf"
"dwnanocaps regular (truetype)"="dwnanocaps.ttf"
"abstract (truetype)"="abstract.ttf"
"uf mr. pixel tools (truetype)"="uf_mrpixel-tools.ttf"
"modern (all res)"="modern.fon"
"script (all res)"="script.fon"
"scalasans caps unknown (truetype)"="scalasanscapsunknown.ttf"
"all caps (truetype)"="allcaps.ttf"
"memoria caps (truetype)"="memoria_.ttf"
"munica regular caps (truetype)"="munirg__.ttf"
"semplice regular caps (truetype)"="semprg__.ttf"
"hooge 05_57 caps (truetype)"="hooge05_57.ttf"
"newzald-bookitalic (opentype)"="newzald-bookitalic.otf"
"newzald-blackitalic (opentype)"="newzald-blackitalic.otf"
"newzald-bold (opentype)"="newzald-bold.otf"
"newzald-book (opentype)"="newzald-book.otf"
"aurora extended (truetype)"="auroe___.ttf"
"corbel (truetype)"="corbel.ttf"
"gill sans mt (truetype)"="gill sans mt.ttf"
"marke eigenbau normal (truetype)"="marken__.ttf"
"frucade medium 8 (96 dpi)"="frucm___.fon"
"frucade medium (truetype)"="frucm___.ttf"
"anorexia"="anorexia.fon"
"aqui"="aqui.fon"
"cure"="cure.fon"
"drift"="drift.fon"
"edges"="edges.fon"
"gelly"="gelly.fon"
"glisp"="glisp.fon"
"glisp-bold"="glisp-bold.fon"
"lime"="lime.fon"
"mints-mild"="mints-mild.fon"
"mints-strong"="mints-strong.fon"
"nu"="nu.fon"
"snap"="snap.fon"
"blank (truetype)"="blank.ttf"
"calibri bold caps bold (truetype)"="calibri bold caps.ttf"
"itc avant garde gothic lt medium (truetype)"="itc avant garde gothic lt medium.ttf"
"kroeger 05_55"="kroeger.fon"
"calibri (truetype)"="calibri.ttf"
"arial caps (truetype)"="arialcaps.ttf"
"calibri caps (truetype)"="calibri0.ttf"
"calibri bold (truetype)"="calibrib.ttf"
"corbel bold (truetype)"="corbelb.ttf"
"haxrcorp 4088 6 (96 dpi)"="haxrcorp 4088.fon"
"haxrcorp 4088 caps 9"="haxrcorp caps.fon"
"segoe ui bold (truetype)"="seguibd.ttf"
"segoe ui (truetype)"="seguibk.ttf"
"swiss 721 bold condensed bt d-type (truetype)"="swisscb-dtype.ttf"
"itc avant garde gothic lt medium caps (truetype)"="itc avant garde gothic lt medium caps.ttf"
"kroeger 05_55 caps (truetype)"="kroe0555caps.ttf"
"standard 07_57 caps (truetype)"="stan0757caps.ttf"

but wtf i cant select them from appernce list.... in appearence i can select all default plus arial caps and all calibri....

do you see your font name here?
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\fonts

(list of installed fonts)

now what i need is find a font that can be selected from apperence...
thanks for tips.

1.
hm. i was wrong. *fon font types are also can be selected from the font list. i just checked in my list and there are *fon files too.

2.
you can't change the font size in regedit. the dialog font size is defined in the dialogs in the resources (dll, exe). see it in reshacker. (open a dll) every dialog has its own font setting. in most of the cases it is ms shell dlg, 8 but it could be different. that means you can change the font size in all the dialogs, but that would be tremendous work to do. reshack every dialog in every file? that is too much.

but you can change it in a font editor. you can adjust the "zooming factor" or something for font sizes. if the size 8 is too big for you, you can adjust it to get it smaller. i mean it will be still font size 8, but smaller.

hmm.... i got one in ttf format but same they didt show up in appearance dialog...
what is diference between http://i37.tinypic.com/f210np.jpg seems only with o symbol .ttf can be selected in appearance dialog
2) and is there any way to change system font size with regedit

thanks for quick answer yes im using classic theme and font is .fon format! ahhh that sux all fonts i like are .fon format! im looking for caps font @ttf format any recommendation!

newb09(511):

are you using windows classic theme or visualstyle?
is the font properly installed? is the font in fon or ttf format? afaik only ttf font can be selected in the appearance dialog. but i am not 100% sure.

hello there, i have prob with changin fonts.... i got system font (haxrcorp caps) changed with regedit but how can i change all dialogs in appearance with same font as system... there no such a font!

thanks for the tip, but i think ill just keep it then :)

john(508):

i don't know how to completely remove it. but try this:

128 menu
language lang_english, sublang_english_us
{
popup ""
{
}
}

it will remove the menu items but the menu bar will still be there.

thanks again des, now it looks a lot better :)

also wanted to ask, any idea about removing the menu? (i think i asked about this a long time ago, but cant rememer)

here is the half-hacked one: http://www.sendspace.com/file/tzeruc

if you want just to shrink the height of the seekbar:

the height of the seekbar: reshacker > dialog 10022 and i changed its height to 7. the original is 12.
+
hex 83460409 @ [0x9f4d8] ....09 - move up seek button. this means, the end of 83460409 is 09 and by changing 09 to 03 (or 01, 02...etc) will move up the seek button. (i changed it to 03)
+
hex 83c009 @ [0x9fe96] ...09 - move up seekbar track. by changing the 09 will move up the seek "track" or what is it. (i changed it to 03)

guess i screwed up the links:

mpc-hc:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yjhzyy2yg1w

codecpack:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3dgkijyjymz

im not completely sure its the right one, but i think so:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=fe97a1e0363b7ab6d0d290dca69ceb5c91d59897ed2979369b20786b9a6e1ed0

i got it from this codecpackage:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=fe97a1e0363b7ab6d0d290dca69ceb5c91d59897ed2979369b20786b9a6e1ed0
(originaly from this site: http://www.cccp-project.net/ )

id still love to get the version you changed, because its the height of the seekbar that annoys me the most :)

john(502):

i did something, but that seek button is just pain in the ass. it makes me crazy. http://i35.tinypic.com/415kx.png
i can't do the same like i did in my version of mpc. i don't know if i can do it or not again.

it is funny, it is almost 2010 and still there are softwares with that annoying windows classic borders. (without any alternatives, skin or settings)

oh. and can you upload that version of mpc-hc again? i can't find that specific version on the net. i need it because it seems i altered something and i forgot what was that. so i need the original. (the old link is dead)

useing a simple exe program in wv pc on windows 7 so it can be run from the desktop

hi des, just wanted to check if you managed to find some new hexvalues for mpc-hc :) (one i really want to find is the one that changes the height of the seekbar completely)

in the css i edited / added this

div#menufv {
width: 100px;
height: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
}
div#menufk {
width: 400px;
height: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
}


and added this to the script:

$('menufv').addevents({
'mouseenter': function(){
this.set('tween', {
duration: 1000,
transition: fx.transitions.bounce.easeout
}).tween('height', '300px');
},
'mouseleave': function(){
this.set('tween', {}).tween('height', '80px');
}
});

$('menufk').addevents({
'mouseenter': function(){
this.set('tween', {
duration: 1000,
transition: fx.transitions.bounce.easeout
}).tween('height', '400px');
},
'mouseleave': function(){
this.set('tween', {}).tween('height', '80px');
}
});

that is all. i guess.

love you.

if it isnt too much, could you tell me what you did? i tried alot of stuff but couldnt get it to work

oh.... you mean you you don't want to get totally iconless system but do want iconless classic start menu? well.. i don't know...

dan aikido(497):

here is a hack / tweak for that.
http://des.virtualplastic.net/tips.html#shortcutmenu

it is better than just removing the icon, because if you remove all the icon from the classic start menu, the icon space won't disappear. and with that big iconspace or placeholder it looks ugly.

des, is it possible to get an iconless classic start menu?

sam(495):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/fso6il

hey, i have edited this startpage:http://justhumba.deviantart.com/art/gaia09-startpage-132676294

i have hit a few problems and i cant get some things to work. could you take a look at it maybe? the problem is i cant get the animation on the fifth and the tf dropdown links

thanks
http://www.mediafire.com/?knfgupngujx

thanks :d

yes. something like this?
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/contextmenu_source.html
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/contextmenu.htm

it doesn't use the default ui but you can alter it to fit your menu (windows) design. (with css)

since the desktop uses the iexplorer engine to render the html desktop, make sure the script you choose is working under ie6. there are plenty of custom menu scripts if you want something different.

the scripts in my example both works under ie. i just tested it.

another thing; is it possible to create a custom context menu with a html file, but with the native context menu ui? thanks.

i edited the file below. now it has a show / hide text button.

thanks des, also how do i create a button to show/hide it?

dan aikido:

it also can be useful for the run box:
http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/misc_cut.html#shortnames
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\app paths

dan aikido(487):

here is the code: http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/html-run-box.htm
it is just like the original run box. except that, if you mistype something and hit enter, there will be no annoying error msg like in the original run box. (nothing happens)

for typing you can use full format: calc.exe, notepad.exe or short format: calc, notepad ...etc.

how do i create a "run" command box like the one in your video using html? thx.

dude(485):

you are right. and thx for pointing that out. i just put there a warning msg.

man you should maybe warn people that leaving windows files unprotected can harm your system if you had a virus or something like that

des: holding my fingers crossed :)

i changed the 3d colors to black, but it made other things look weird, so i changed it back. let us know when you get a solution :)

john:
removing the border is harder than i thought. in irfanview hiding the border was piece of cake, but this is not like that. :( i can remove it but there are side effects which i have to fix. will see later.


dan aikido:
how did you remove that border in mpc?
replacing those icons should work. but there is another one in bitmap 215. (the last one) or i am missing something... (or forgot)

but another way to change that icon is to add a bitmap to the dialog 10021 and that will cover up the real icon so you will have always a custom icon. the only "bug" with this, it will be shown always. (even when not playing)

http://i36.tinypic.com/21km4j4.png

i just replaced them, didn't work. i'm convinced mpc displays the 16px icon of the file type. thanks anyways though, i'll wait for des :)

dan: make sure you replace icon groups 302, 303 and 304. i did so with reshacker and it changed the icon. (feels ignoret t_t)

nevermind, i got removed it the 3d border, still need help on the other things tho :)

i successfully changed the mpc statusbar font! i also removed the 3d border, but whenever i play a video it comes back. also, i still can't change the little 16px icon in the bottom left. any ideas? thx

des: thank you ^^

john(475):

yes, the ones i upped still has that border. i only removed in my version. hehe.
i assume you need the last version of home cinema offsets. will try to remove in that version and tell you the offsets and hex values.

i guess it wil be the same as in irfanview. somewhere hex 680002 need to be changed to 680000. will see tomorrow.

ok seems des turned up and saved the day ;)

des: mind sharing with us how to remove that pesky 3dborder in mpc? (the files you uploaded some time ago still has the border(or i am doing something awfully wrong)).

ah, my bad. to change the icon you pointed out you need to change the icon and/or change the bitmap (i think it is 215). atleast thats how it works for me.

never tried the font so you will have to wait for des to give an answer to that

hopefully that works :)

dan aikido(470):

about the mpc border around the picture. i can remove that border. in my mpc version i succesfully removed that border. just like in the irfanview.

the status font and its size also can be changed.

the dialog 10021 is the status bar. it can be resized.
the dialog 10022 is for the seekbar. it can be resized.

although you can select font when editing this dialog in reshacker, it doesn't change the actual font, and font size. but you can hexedit the font. at offset 3600b8 there is a m.i.c.r.o.s.o.f.t. .s.a.n.s. .s.e.r.i.f. change that to m.s. s.h.e.l.l. d.l.g.

and at offset 3600ee there is a 58. that is the font size. change it to 5e or 60 for getting font size 8.

my mpc version 6.4.9.0.

thanks for the fast reply.

i already tried reshack, no luck on changing the icons or the font. i think mpc displays the 32px of the file icon.

dan:
1 the border:
you cant remove the bordet, des has tried removing if for a long time but so far no luck.

2 the icons:
for the icons use reshack (reshacking is usually a good place to start when you want to change something)

3 changing colour:
changing the colour takes some hex-editing, i do not know how to do it but des uploaded a few of an old version and is currently trying to change the new version.

here is the old ones he uploaded:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=md2inv4i

4 font:
i think you can just change it in reshack, but im not sure

gl with the editing :)

how do i remove the border, change the colors of the seekbar, and change the fonts and icons in mpc? here's a pic: http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/9628/hlp3.jpg

thx

thanks des, i can see that it takes a lot of time to find out these numbers.

i really appreciate it :)

good luck hunting em

john(467):

will see. because that mpc hack is not just one hack. that is series of hacks together. that's why it is not easy. and i don't remember what were this little individual hacks together.

ehh. i don't understand why the mpc home cinema developer hasn't changed the seekbar button and volume bar into skinnable yet. (because it is ugly, when every part of the system is well skinned and that part of the mpc is just ****) or at least could have changed the settings for that and the windows could properly skin it like in any other apps or windows apps. (even the manifest trick doesn't work with mpc)

anyway. i was able to do this so far:
hex 83460409 @ [0x9f4d8] ....09 - move up seek button
hex 830608 @ [0x9f4dc] ..... 08 - left margin of the seeek button
hex 83460807 @ [0x9f590] ...0807 - width of seek button
hex 83460c08 @ [0x9f594] ...08 - height of the seek button
hex 830603 @ [0x9f5eb] ...03 - no right border of seekbutton
hex 83c005 @ [0x9fe9d] ...05 - height of white seekbar track (when playing)
hex 83c009 @ [0x9fe96] ...09 - move up white seekbar track
hex 05ffd6 @ [0x9fb60] 05... - the white seek track bg color.
hex 6a10 @ [0x9fb63] ..10 - top border color of the white seek track
hex 6a14 @ [0x9fb6b] ..14 - if 6a11 - the white track border color + button border?
hex 6a0f @ [0x9fb73] ..0f - the whole seek panel bg color

will see if i can do the same.

hi des.

i was wondering if you could try to reshack the latest mpc homecinema.
the reason is that it has hardwaredecoding, which the old one doesnt.

i tried to do it myself by using the ones you uploaded before and then compared the hex of the files, but for some reason i never get it to work. (there was a lot of differences between the files and i couldnt find the file you had as a original to compare to) :(

i want it to look like the 2nd example of those files you uploaded if possible (looks like this):
http://i34.tinypic.com/315ednc.png

here is the mpc home cinema:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zjjdgeqfzrl

im sorry to ask this of you, but i really couldnt do it myself. hopefully i can compare the version i uploaded to the one you (hopefully) give me and then know how to change this in future versions. :)

nvm it worked o.o

the contextaware link doesn't work could you re-up it? thx

thanks :)

dan aikido(462):

here is a tutorial if you want to re-arrange the existing desktop menu. you can create submenus but you can only use the existing commands. you can't add new ones.
http://wint.virtualplastic.net/showtweak.php?tweak_id=111

but if you want a custom menu item with submenu like on my screenshot, you need to use a shell extension. contextaware to be exact.

http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/contextaware.zip
http://des.virtualplastic.net/contextaware.png

another thing, how do you add submenus and menu items for the desktop context menu (right click) ?

got it :)

dan aikido(459):

it uses the font defined in the visualstyle isn't it? StatusFont.

one more thing, how do i change the font of the statusbar in taskmanager? there is no rcdata

thanks worked like a charm!

open reshacker.exe in reshacker and locate this line in rcdata/tmainform:
object statusbar1: tstatusbar

and paste this lines below that line:
font.height = -11
font.name = 'Ms shell dlg'
font.style = []

(-11 means 8px font)

i don't use xvi32 but try something similar. if you cant find rcdata there, then try it with hex editor and look for ms sans serif, arial, tahoma, etc. or send me the file and i take a look at it.

how would i change the fonts shown here http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2117/hlpm.jpg ? thanks

thanks for taking a look :) luckily the old utorrent isnt that ugly, so i can live with it :d

i see. and looks like all the tab icons (or bitmap) are hardcoded into the exe file. :( i think it is a real bug and will be fixed in the next version. i guess.

there is nothing i can do about it.

ok it seems the searchbarbug was because of my visualskin:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y1nijuz3ygm

since it seems imageshack is lagging:

old:
http://i33.tinypic.com/o5onqa.png

new:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2qan09y.png

alright :)

here is how it looks with the old utorrent:
http://img178.imageshack.us/i/olda.png/

and this is how it looks with the new utorrent:
http://img182.imageshack.us/i/newu.png/

these are the same customizationfiles that both version use:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?5ygynlzomhf

the search-bar looks strange in the new versions (i tried both 1.8.4 and 1.8.1).
and for some reason it doesnt seem to care about the tabs.bmp(1.84 and 1.8.1)

what bug? post a screenshot. maybe we can fix it. :) is it utorrent skin related or visualstyle related?

thanks again des, i succesfully unpacked a never version of utorrent. now the problem is that i dont get visual bugs from the new version and they dont recognise my tabs-skin for utorrent. so im sticking to the old version.

i am aware of the main.ico and tray.ico, but i also want it to have another icon in the "open with" section (rightklick on a file -> open with), and reshacking the original icon is the only way i know how to do this.

it might be possible to to change it by editing the registry, but so far i havent found any setting that do that.

seems i will have to live with it being there all green t_t

john(447):

yes. there are a lots of packer/compression methods. upx (most common), aspack, pecompact, asprotect, and etc... you could find unpackers for these packers, and even you could find universal unpackers too.

uncompressing utorrent.exe (compressed with pecompact 2.x) was pain in the ass. i tried with unpecompact without success and some universal unpackers and i just couldn't unpack utorrent... till i once found this universal unpacker: http://legroom.net/software/uniextract

with this i successfully unpacked utorrent 1.8.1 although it reported me errors but did the job well done.

btw you don't need to reshack utorrent to change the caption icon and the tray icon. you just need to put main.ico and tray.ico into %appdata%/utorrent folder.

hi again des. i never really got the whole part about recompress/unpack files.
i downloaded a few unpackers and some have worked but most of em fail.

right now im trying to replace the icon in utorrent.exe (link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/n3ebaq )
but just reshacking it makes it impossible to open, and when i search for unpackers of all kind they all fail.

i have the same problem with a lot of files, they just wont unpack.

i guess most unpackers are custom made for certain kind of packeging-techniques (if that even is a word).

i tried something called peid to try to find what unpacker to use, but when it says something is used i cant find it on the internet or it doesnt work.

so, you got any pointers or anything? :)

i don't use twitter.

just wanted to say thanks for all the hacks/tweaks you share. been a huge help with my streamlining of xp on my netbook.
are you on twitter by chance?

dan aikido: try freecommander as replacement for explorer: http://www.freecommander.com/fc_shots_en.htm
not sure how much you could customize it though

dan aikido(442):

with hack? i don't think so. with an app or shell extension? maybe there is an app for that, but i don't know.

is it possible to get column view in windows explorer? screenshot: http://www.macvswindows.com/images/thumb/d/d3/osx_finder_columnview.jpg/500px-osx_finder_columnview.jpg

no. only with hexeditor, resedit or skinstudio. skinstudio is shareware with 30 days trial. when i created my vs i used skinstudio and the 30 days were enough to edit / create my vs. after that i uninstalled and since then never installed it again.

that was 4.5 years ago.

the content margins, sizing margins and the bitmap + magic pink the key to achieve this. you need to experiment on this with skinstudio.

can that be done in reshacker?

sam(438):

you need to change the margins too not just the bitmaps.
(sizingmargins and contentnargins)

hey des.

i noticed in your ss of irfanview your window frames are only 2px wide. how did you make it like this? mine is 4 or 5px which i think is the default. i tried to slim them down in reshacker ,to remove the border i changed the colour to pink which normally removes other bits, but not this.

thanks

oh, i see. yes, it has a little margin when using the fit only big images to desktop setting. but no border.

i am fine with xp now and for the near future. but after that, i don't know. maybe i will give it a try and see what can i reshack. because i don't like a lot of things in vista/win7. in example; the explorer window. the address bar, nav buttons, and the search bar can't be placed anywhere, like in xp. i prefer this layout: caption bar, menu + toolbar or menu and toolbar. i hope this can be changed by editing the uifiles.

...and no classic start menu (in win7), no active desktop, huge amount of hdd space required, and so on.

..but the xp by default was also not so good looking for me. ...there is hope. :)

thanks again des :)

it seems the difference is because i use "fit only big images to desktop", you should be able to see it yourself if you use that setting.

btw still no thoughts about migrating to windows 7?

here is your exe that i modified + your orginal ini file and my current ini file.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qajgwk

btw i've noticed that in your exe file the accelerators resource is corrupted which causes the hotkeys not working. i recommend to download another irfanview 4.20 version and then reshack it again to your needs. oh. and first you need to uncompress the exe with upx in order to reshack it. but i guess you know it.

this mysterious border that you see (after removing the border) could be related to your vs. send me a screenshot if it is still peresent.

if you send it, could you send both the exe and the .ini-file, because as i see it i either must have done something wrong editing the hex (not that likely because of the easy instructions) or i have messed up some settings in the ini-file.

there is also the chance that my visual theme for some reason limits me. but that is kinda unlikely.

if possible would you mind sending over a copy of the irfanview that you changed.

i dont know i could mess up such an easy thing, but for some reason i dont get the same results.

if not i will just settle for how it is now :)

john(431):

in my irfanview window there is no more border. nothing. here is a sshot.
http://i30.tinypic.com/2uhwmev.png

as you can see the whole clientedge border is gone now, the border you can see is the window border that can be styled with the visualstyle. so it's gone forever. :)

but i see you solved teh thing already.

how do i find these values?
it is complicated a little bit. requires 3 software; hexeditor, disassembler + winspector and sometimes i use msdn.com knowledge base. although this one was easy find. :)

ok seems i was wrong, the 3d border is gone, but irfanview still changes the size of the window like the 3dborder still was there.

because of that i saw a white "border", but in fact it was only the background. now that i changed it to black i rarely notice it.

i thank you yet again des, this makes it so much better :d

thanks des :)

its a lot better than the 3d border now, but do you think it is possible to completely remove the border? as it is now the border is still there, its just completely white.

ofc that makes it so you wont even notice it at pictures with white background, but then there is the black ones.. :(

btw, how do you find these values? you cant be going through the hole file changing every number right? if you give me a few pointers i might be able to help search for another way to do it :)

john(426):

to remove the 3d clientedge border:
hex 02 at offset 65f3c. change it to 00 and the border is gone. :)

ryan,

.tabbrowser-tabs .tab-icon { display: none; } in userchrome.css

if you want to hide all icons in firefox (bookmark icons, etc.) type about:config in the addressbar and search for

browser.chrome.favicons
browser.chrome.site_icons

and set them to false.

for firefox the icon in the url bar can be hidden with this in your userchrome.css:

#identity-box
{
display: none !important;
}

does anyone know how to hide the icon in the tabs using the the userchrome.css?

be sure to tell us if you get rid of that pesky 3d border ;)

bobbie(422):

i don't know. in the screenshot it could be a another shell, or just removed the caption text and every text.

dan aikido:
thx, but it is too minimal. i need thumbnail browser. but for replacing the windows picture viewer is ok.

john:
yeah. will do that and see if i can reshack it to my needs. :d

des: its my config, but you can easily do it yourself:

download it from: http://www.irfanview.com

then just change some settings and reshack the icon.

here's a good alternate picture viewer: http://www.xworks.ca/artsee/

you can turn off slideshow by right click> uncheck slideshow.

no not the navigation buttons i mean like this:

http://kikirolee.deviantart.com/art/2316-92840145
http://novoo.deviantart.com/art/wtr-118965438

(where the images have no wording or (information) under the pictures...just the pics..i like...i'm sure this is nothing new to figure out in the hacking world
thanks des

hmm.. i downloaded this irfanview. this looks good. i will give it a try. is it your config or it looks this way by default?

john(418):

oh i see, the 3dish border. it is a clientedge effect if i am not mistaken.
sorry i don't use irfanview.

i am still looking for the best image viewer which is small (only some files, and requires 1-2 mb hdd space) and can be reshacked easily. i tried a lots of them but... it is sometimes the design of the program or/and layout that i don't like. in example; imagine_1.0.6 would be ok, but the menu icons can not be removed without shrinking the menu. i just hate menu icons.

ewww... i hate it. hate it!

bobbie(415):

you mean the navigation buttons? so only the picture will be shown nothing else?
sorry i don't know how to remove that. to be honest, i haven't even tried it yet.

me again, i kinda messed up the picture link. here is the correct one:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1962/problemirfanviewborder.png

hi again des, got a problem with irfanview and its border, and was wondering if you have any idea how to fix it.

any tips or ideas?

http://img24.imageshack.us/i/problemirfanviewborder.png/

http://www.2shared.com/file/7729324/c39f3539/irfanview.html

i secretly hope that you already use irfanview and have found a way to remove it ;)

bobbie: one way is to reshack shimgvw.dll (in windows\system32) and remove 105 and 107 from the bitmap-folder.

that way the buttons will still be down there at the bottom, but they will be really small.

i havent found a way to completely remove them, so i started using irfanview instead to watch my pictures, because you can use it without any buttons and with the use of reshack you can change its icon.

how do i remove the wording or file information below my pictures in window picture and fax viewer? i just want the pics to show only

john(413):

oh. my bad.... i forgot that i also changed the msinfo regkeys. this is why you couldn't find that registry key i wrote previously. (sometimes i just forgot how many things i changed in windows) ...ehh

thanks for your help des.

about the changing of .nfo-files, i couldnt find the key you pointed out (i also tried creating it, with no sucess in changing the icon) but i found another way to change it:

[hkey_classes_root\.nfo]
@="nfo_auto_file"

[hkey_classes_root\nfo_auto_file]
@=""
"editflags"=dword:00000000
"browserflags"=dword:00000008

[hkey_classes_root\nfo_auto_file\defaulticon]
@="c:\\program files\\xp-icons\\filetypes - text and picture\\nfo.ico,0"

looking at it now it was really easy to change, but for a long time i had no real idea what to do, and once i removed enough from the registry and made windows remake it it somehow created the above, and then all i had to do was change the icon i wanted.

dan aikido(411):

i don't use firefox theme. i just removed the icons, resized the tabs, and changed the close button.

didn't work, but thanks anyway. i'll look for other ways. one more question, how did you get windows to theme your tabs in firefox? or is that a firefox theme?

dan aikido(409):

i don't know about firefox 3 but in firefox 2:

#urlbar #page-proxy-deck
{
display: none !important;
}

(usercontent.css)

hi again,

how did you go about removing this icon in firefox http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/9021/75848986.jpg ? thanks.

try this:

in regedit search for "msinfo.document", and then change the default icon path.

hkey_classes_root\msinfo.document\defaulticon
hkey_local_machine\software\classes\msinfo.document\defaulticon

hi, just wanted to ask if you know how to change the icon of .nfo-files.

when i use tools/folder options/file types/advanced/change icon it also changes the icon of .txt and a lot of other text-files.

hopefully there is a registry-setting i somehow missed

it did thanks des.

rename sfcfiles.dll in both system32 and dllcache folder then try again. (first in dllcache) or use replacer.

replacer usually does the job.

des thanks for the reply...unfortunately when i save the hack for browselc.dll adds an original browselc.dll and my changes dont take effect. i tried changing the system file checker by renaming it...what am i doing wrong? thanks bro

bobbie(402):

making only the explorer (file, edit, view) menubar to another color is not possible. to remove that menu bar however is possible with a regtweak. http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/nomenubar.zip

combining all the menu items under one word is possible. check wint's hacks here: http://wint.virtualplastic.net/showtweak.php?tweak_id=28

and more hacks here:
http://wint.virtualplastic.net/hackindex2.php?category=menus

des is there a way to make the toolbar text (file, edit, etc) different colors.. i want them to be the same color as the background...thus making them not show....b/c i can't figure the hack out to combine them into a compact menu all under the word file. oh this is for win explorer..not ie

thanks so much for your fast reply!

dan aikido(399):

1. no theme. it is just a default firefox with all the images and icons removed from the ui.

2. shell32.dll > bitmap 204 and 205. this is the toolbar button's icons.

3. unfortunately there is no solution for this. in my screenshots that ua, a6, u6 text before the title text actually is an icon. this way is better than having an empty space before the caption text.

4. well, no. sorry. however here is the lite version of my htmldesk project.
http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/the_hybrid_lite.zip

you can use it and change anything you want. just edit the files and folders path and the hdd letter in the script. or remove anything you don't want.

hello des,

i have a few questions:

1. what firefox theme are you using? i know you're using your reshacked firefox. i just want to know what theme it is.

2. how did you get your explorer toolbars to look like that? what did you reshack, and how?

3. i've noticed in order to remove the 16px icon in the top left of the titlebar, you must reshack each .exe. i tried this on firefox and it worked fine, but my title text didn't move to the left. do you have a solution for this?

4. can you upload your html file used in your active desktop? over the last couple of days i've tried to create a clone of yours, but i have absolutely no experience in javascript and a moderate experience in html.

thanks for your time and keep up the amazing work!

yes, i did.

greenfish icon editor pro
http://www.freewarefiles.com/greenfish-icon-editor-pro_program_37937.html

icofx is also a good choice but its ui hurts my eyes. (icons in menu, etc)
http://icofx.ro

hey man, in your screenshots, did you make those systray icons yourself? if so, what program did you use. i tried to make my own but they kept coming out blurry.

i don't know. i will try something.

...you could edit the startbutton and taskbar bg image (by moving up a bit) to fit the newly hacked taskbar buttos. at least you could move up the start button a bit. but i don't know how your start button looks like, maybe it is not an option for you.

on the slimmer taskbar issue, how would i go about moving the start button up the taskbar a little?

tektonik(393):

persze, nembaj. csak azért angol az oldal, mert így több a látogató. meg hát internet, ugye.

amennyire én tudom, nem lehet ezt megcsinálni. pedig elvileg lehetne, de nem működik. ugyanis a visualstyle-ban meglehet adni olyat, hogy transparent = true és a transparentcolor-t is meglehet adni. de ez a taskbarnál nem működik valamiért. valami limitáció / fogyatékosság lehet ez.

persze én sem tudhatok mindent, de szerintem nem lehet. trüközéssel ugyan lehet hasonlót csinálni. pl a taskbar színe olyan legyen, mint a desktop háttér színe és akkor olyan hatása van, mint ha átlátszó lenne.

hello. remelem nem gond hogy magyarul irok:)

a kerdesem az lenne hogy a windows xp-ben meg lehet valtoztatni a talca hatterenek az atlatszosagat? tudom 1001 program van a teljes talca atlatoszsaganak megvaltoztatasahoz, de azokkal nem lehet elerni azt az eredmenyt amit en szeretnek.

valaszodat elore is koszonom:)

yea that worked, but has cut the white bit off, making the bar slimmer. ill play around with the vs and see what i can do.

thanks again

yes i am aware of that. what happens if you unlock the taskbar and then lock it again? anyway, i will try to do something about it. but not now. tomorrow, if it is ok.

+ maybe this "bug" can be fixed by editing the visualstyle taskbar button image, or it's margins/paddings, or the whole taskbar background.

dammit
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8803/70942567.png

http://img195.imageshack.us/content.php?page=done&l=img195/8803/70942567.png&via=mupload

last thing...

i dont want to sound picky, but by removing the taskbar icons, does it shrink the the height of the item in the taskbar, area in red shouldnt be there, it should be part of the button

sorry, kinda hard to explain

yes.

there is 31ff at offset 154bc in the original file. change it to 9fff. and there is 3004 at offset 154fa, change it to 3104. that is all.

thanks, works great!

could you tell me the offsets that you changed, if sometime i want the icons back?

her it is: http://www.sendspace.com/file/85w16j

http://www.mediafire.com/?szmiyuykiwa

thank you

that is the problem why you couldn't find the correct value. send me the file and i can hack it. (upload to somewhere)

most of my hacks for sp3 eng. the values and offsets are for sp3 eng version.

sp2 eng

what is your windows version? sp3 eng?

yes, the way to iconless system is starting here:
hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics
shell icon size = 0
shell small icon size = 0 (this key doesn't exist by default)
....after setting these values to 0, it requires a log off + log on.

this will only remove the ~80% of the icons. (in explorer windows, menus, address bar). to go completelly iconless, it requires a lot of reshacks. (dialogs, taskbar, caption bar, etc)

thanks for the help!

the icons i wanted to remove were the ones in this tut, i said taskmanager, when i meant taskbar (my bad):
http://des.virtualplastic.net/mods.html#tbbicon

this setting shell icons to null, is this the iconless style i keep hearing about?

lindsay:

you don't need hexeditor to remove the icons. use reshacker. what icons do you want to remove?

the quicknotes and events are javascripts. it is for html desktop. won't work in rainmeter.

the log off and turn off computer strings are in explorer.exe string table 46 or in the menu 204. reshack it.

about the start menu space:
when you remove the icons the placeholder for the icons will be not removed unfortunately. i was experimenting on this but the only thing i could do is to set this icon to 1px or more and the placeholder will be 1px or more. i couldn't set it to null unfortunately. i mean when the shell icon size is set to null the placeholder will be there. when the shell icon size is set to 1px the placeholder will be also set to 1px. but it is not nice this way. (i also tried to hexedit the explorer.exe and i can only set it to bigger)

and the thing is; the taskbar icons, the caption icons and the classic start menu icons are connected to each other in some way. i haven't figured it out yet how to separate this.

if you want a small and minimal custom made start menu, do this:
http://des.virtualplastic.net/tips.html#shortcutmenu (it is the best with shell icons set to null in hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics -> shell icon size)

also.....

how can i customize the shutdown dialog (xp)

http://customize.org/screenshots/65090
in this ss, the start menu has space between the different buttons, can this be removed and can the buttons be aligned to the left?

hello again, i have a few more questions

i need some help with this hex edit to remove icons from taskmngr. i got the cygnus hex editor and i searched for the offsets etc but couldnt find them

your qucknotes, events thing. would it be possible to put that code into a rainmeter config?

for the classic start menu is it possible to rename the "turn off computer.." button?

thanks in advance

zenith(375):

???
...i don't quite understand.

here are the font settings if this is you want.
hkey_current_user\control panel\desktop\windowmetrics

i want to knkow all out registary addrss on xp. change toolbar font via registry (folde caption name

awesome, thats brillant, thanks very much :]

ok i got it.

sndvol32.exe /t or sndvol32.exe -t :d

oh.. i got it.. (facepalm for me) :d

well...
...i don't know how to do that. :( even if it is possible to invoke that dialog.

no, i know this. what i want is, when you click volume in the systray it pops up a little box with a volume slider, to close it i simply click anywhere on the computer screen. i wanted to put this into the start menu as a shortcut. i have tried to create a shortcut for the volume that is found in control panel, but that opens in a new window, i dont want this

lindsay(369):

classic start menu? you can drag and drop shortcuts into classic menu. (to the top of the menu) or isn't this you want?

hello again,

i was wondering if you could tell me if its possible to create a volume shortcut in the start menu. i want it to be the same as the volume in the systemtray, not the actual volume options that opens up a new window

wow, it was pretty easy, thank you :]

lindsay(366):

that is quite easy. open shell32.dll in reshacker and find dialog 1003. there you can delete unnecessary items that you don't want or make your own design. then save the file, use replacer to replace the file and you are done.

hi. how would i go about making my run dialog like this:
http://customize.org/screenshots/46585

but id like to have an "ok" button

i got it, i just restarted, and tried to just manually move the file in and it worked, bo renaming or anything

how do i remove these folders?

maybe there is a backup folder in your system (a hidden folder?) containing some of the system files including sfcfiles.dll. you should rename those ones too.

i simply don't have backup folder nor dllcache folder and this is why i never encountered this problem before. (i guess)

i changed the files name in the dllcache folder, but it created a new file in that folder

oh forgot to mention something. you need to rename in system32/dllcache folder too. not just in system32. first in dllcache then in system32. so it can't recreate itself from the dllcahce folder.

when i rename that file, it just creates a new identical file almost immediately and i cant replace

temporarily rename the sfcfiles.dll then try to replace your shimgvw.dll file manually.

hey,

i have been trying to change the windows image view buttons, i have sucessfully changed then, but when i try to replace the orignal file with the hacked one it doesnt work. i have tried manually replacing the file, and using a program called replacer.

any help would be great

the css code below is ok, i just tested on a fresh firefox 2. it removes the tab icon and the address icon. then i tried with firefox 3 and it just didn't work. (this is why i hate to update anything)

thanks alot, much appreachiated

unfortunately, when i started to tweak the firefox i didn't use the userchrome.css. i simply edited the css files inside the .jar files so this is why it's a bit hard to remember what and where i edited back then.

i can dig up something later, but for now here is the iconless firefox 2:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7ciza9wt

yea ok, ill give that a go
thanks

to be honest i don't remember how did i do this exactly. it was 2 years ago when i did this. i should have written down all my firefox tweaks.

i use firefox 2.0.0.4 btw. i have an iconless version of this version if you want i can upload it for you.

i put the code into the userchrome, but it didnt work, im guessing i did it wrong because i dont know any css. care to elaborate?

sam(350):

i think it was:

.tab-icon
{
display: none !important;
}

or

.tabbrowser-tabs .tab-icon
{
display: none !important;
}

+

#urlbar #page-proxy-deck
{
display: none !important;
width: 0px !important;
height: 0px !important;
}

in userchrome.css.

thanks,

another question, how did you remove all the icons from ff, the icons in the url box and the tab icons?

thanks

sam(348):

hi.
adding a new pop menu to the classic start menu is not quite possible that way. :(
the only way to have a custom menu is using the c:\documents and settings\username\start menu folder with our own shortcuts in it.

i guess the real traffic cone icon for the app is in not the vlc.exe. maybe in a dll. you could use the icon extractor to find out where is the real icon that you want to change. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iconsext.html

great site!

have a few questions:

if i wanted to add a custom popup menu to the classic start menu how would i do that. eg. i want to add a shortcut popup to my most frequently used apps. i know its in the explorer.exe and what menu etc, but how would i list the program command string?

i tried to resource hack the vlc.exe to change its icon, the icon for the .exe did change, but when i open the program the icon is still the traffic cone.

thanks
sam

james(346):

simply put in to the windows folder.

how do i get the explorer.exe.manifest to work?

oh sorry. i accidentally deleted some of the messages... :(

the whole msgboard is text based. the data file is here:
http://des.virtualplastic.net/discussion.txt
or you can list all messages: list all

please upload the whole message board as a text file so i can read and learn something.

aaron v(341):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/arylmx (graphite v2)
i don't know if it works or not because i don't have x64 system so i can't test it. the only things i didn't change the string tables*. (the reason: because it is in hex format + has a different structure than the uifile and since i can't test it i didn't want to cause file corruption)

but you could try to edit the string tables with cff explorer suite. works with x64 files too. http://ntcore.com/exsuite.php

hope that helps.

i was just wondering if you were able to port graphite_logonui and graphite_v2 to the x64 version of logonui on my system? your files work fine, but i much prefer the latest logonui rather than an older version.

the file is here: http://rapidshare.com/files/261711941/logonui.rar

if you're able to, i don't mind compensating via paypal for your efforts..

about selection box: nothing yet. :(

thanks, but this doesnt add the button, i found actual window manager.
hows it going with that selection box ?
i had a great idea to remove that thumbnail cube in explorer - any ideas how to do that? i am still a beginner in all this windows modification thing so i ask a lot of questions, i have lots of ideas.

i remember now. it is called winroll. at least something similar.
http://www.palma.com.au/winroll/

johan(336):
i knew one once, but i forgot what was the name of it. :(

do youknow any good ways to add one more caption button, one that minimizes to titlebar ? im trying to get a program for that, hard to find a free one,but if you have any ideas .. let me know

sorry, forget about it, its my own fault and everythings ok now
must never replace the whole system32 folder.

hey ive got a problem - my "replacer" doesnt work any more and my start menu "all programs" and other start menu cascade menus dont work - what might be the problem ?

the easiest way to remove the caption text is by setting the text's font blank (just discovered this by downloading some fonts and one of them happened to be blank)

johan(330):

i don't know, but i will try to hexedit something. if i am correct this selection rectangle setting is in user32.dll.

jawan clark(329):

the easiest way to remove the caption text (aka window title text) is by setting the text's color to match the caption (title bar) color. (in windows appearance settings or in inside the visual style)

what is a caption text?
like surfing in the start menu and then that yellow (default) box li..oh wait - this is tooltip .. whatever, what i wanted to ask was - maybe you know how to make the selection box transparent blue on the desktop (youknow - its different inside the folders and on the desktop) ...

des, one last question. by the way you've been a real help...i appreciate your quick response to my questions. what dll do open in reshacker to remove the caption text for things like my documents, desktop, etc. basically all opened windows for xp? and is it under menus or do i need to look in the string table? thanks man

135(327):

if you put the background picture into a blank html file then you could use fade-in javascript to do that. then simply set the html file as your background.
here is an example: http://clagnut.com/sandbox/imagefades

your second question: you mean explorer bar > folders? simply i don't know :(

what do you think - how to fade in the background picture after logging in to windows xp and how to put background picture on the explorer folders bar ?

do you mean in mpc? set it to "don't prefix anything" (options, player, title bar) and change the string in string tabe 9. don't delete just use the space character.

how do you remove the windows caption title text...where in reshacker should i look?

it worked thaks des.

tweetipi(322):

"... theme.mp3"
answer: i don't know.


"also, how is it possible to get autohide.icons to start up automatically when i boot up my computer?"

answer: type into run > shell:startup then copy here the shortcut of the autohide exe.

"is there a way of increasing the room by reducing the font size or spacing or something? "

answer: well, i would recommend rather decreasing the number of the programs shortcut there. (to only the most important programs. and it would be much easier to navigate...)

hi,
does anyone know the name of the singer in the file 'theme.mp3' that is on the download list with autohide.icons?

also, how is it possible to get autohide.icons to start up automatically when i boot up my computer?

also, in my start/all programs, there is not enough room for all my programs to appear - is there a way of increasing the room by reducing the font size or spacing or something?

thanks

tweetipi
richard@tweetipi.com

try this:

128 menu
language lang_english, sublang_english_us
{
popup ""
{
}
}


with this you will still have a thin menu bar but not the menu items. but i will see what can i do with hexeditor.

yes, a lot of the desktop screenshots on deviantart or litestep show their mpc without a menu bar or at least the words aren't showing. is there a minimal style media player that exists? i have a hard time using resource hacker to get rid of menu bars b/c i always get errors. i try deleting the entire thing and it ruins the exe.

i don't know how to hide the menu bar. :( are you sure they use mpc?

well which media player classic are most users using...and i cant get the menu bar to hide without the caption bar leaving also....would like to keep the caption bar, just not the menu(file, etc.) how do i do this?

jawan clark(316):

what do you want to hack in mpc?

hey man, was wondering if you might be able to help me hack med player classic. or if you could point me in the right direction....was looking for a way to reshack things so that i can have the custom look everyone has on deviantart screenshots. ex. custom wall image in front...any help is appreciated.

anyways, just forget it, it was a stupid question

i didnt understand anything you just wrote - ill try it again -
do you know any way to disable ctrl+alt+del function to change from welcome screen to classic logon screen ?

> is this message board helping you in google ratings?
- i guess, yes.

you mean you want to use the task manager instead of the windows security dialog when pressing ctr-alt-del with using the classic logon? or you want to completely disable the ctrl-alt-del keys?

do you have any ideas how to disable ctrl alt del function in the welcome screen (it changes to classic logon)?

yes, pobably, but forget that, it was a stupid idea to get rid of start button
but there is an easy way to remove start menu button - tiny little program called lclock
is this message board helping you in google ratings?

joh(308):

are you talking about this?
http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/misc_cut.html#shortnames
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\app paths\

if you use a visualstyle you can use negative contentmargins values.

like:
[start::button]
contentmargins = -100, 70, 1, 1

this will remove the startmenu. + by reshacking the explorer.exe menu 204 by removing the menu elements so you will have no start menu. but this hack will work on only the classic start menu.

but it doesnt work well, start button came back, so im lookin into this thing
and found this article -
---- basic windows shortcuts.......... maybe you noticed, some apps get launched in the run box just by typing their names (for example iexplore.exe for ie, notepad.exe...). that's because certain registry keys contain shortcuts which allow this. here's how to make these registry shortcuts for yourself. (thanks to our friends at virtual plastic).....(free).....go there! ----
but links dead, so im workin on it, any help is appr.. cant spell it

found it on http://www.tordex.com/startkiller/ in case anyones reading this board

can i totally lose the start menu button and the whole menu ? that would be cool, i put adress toolbar there instead (without go button, works like run)

i guess it is shell extension.

somewhere in your windows or system32 folder or elsewhere has to be a shell extension dll and it could be possible to hack this dll, so you can change the icon and the text, even the command when you click on it. (assuming the ati's control center is an exe file, or something like that)

do a srch for "ati" in your system and maybe you could find something like this; atiext.dll or atishell.dll or something like that. and see what is inside the dll.

oh, also you could use an icon extractor to see where is (in which dll) this red icon. the icon extractor = http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iconsext.html

here it is - http://images.google.com/images?client=opera&rls=en&q=ati context menu&sourceid=opera&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=utf-8&sa=n&hl=en&tab=wi

ati control center is in the desktop context menu with their little logo on left - how to get something like that in there ?
i think it would cool to have like a little windows logo on the left side and then windows xp written on that first line, youd know how to do that?

i just tested it and it didnt work well, 'tiles' view had those backgrounds behind the icon text and there was some other serious crap with background etc etc, not worth tryin
lost my icon positions, great site by the way, very much good information all in one place and all links work and no ads, thats great, one of the best websites ive visited in my whole life (just kidding, maybe not) but seriously, all links work , updated and everything, thanks

yeah, you are right. i forgot that one. yes, that will work.

hey, youre saying you cant change icon size only on desktop, but how about 'view' context menu ? i just changed that left-click menu a little bit, but dont want to actually try this yet because im afraid its gonna re-organize my icons, place em at wrong place etc... but i think its gonna work and display icons as tiles for example, 48x48 or even thumbnails, you know ...

i dont know. i guess it is not that simple. but i don't know. i only know some of it, but it is enough for me to change things, turn things off/on (icons, toolbars, ...), etc.

hey thanks, now i got it, just didnt know what the hex 90 means translated in assembler.
is there any kind of "dictionary" out there, where i can read what hex value the other commands (such as mov, push, je, jne, and so on) have?

phil(296):

see that 8bff 55 8bec .... and so on till you see 90 90 90 90 90.

you need to change all of that values to 90's till you see the "90 90 90 90 90" part. in hexeditor you will see the same. then save as the file and replace it.

be careful because if you do a search for 8bf558bec you will see multiple instances. it is important to begin with the correct one, otherwise it might cause system crash ,etc... if i remember correctly the first appearance of this "8bff558bec" will be the correct one, but check it first by checking* the previous values too. (*by comparing the values in hex editor and in disassembler)

(the "90" means no operation = nop)
if you have problems you could send me the file.

sorry, correct link is
http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=88047129.jpg

according to the file description in reshacker its
"fileversion", "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2105" from german windowsversion.

the screenshot from hdasm is here:
http://img200.imageshack.us/i/33533709.jpg/

thanks for your help ;)

phil(292):

btw, there is a focusremover shell extension. you could try that before the hack. it is much easier than hacking the dll. here it is:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=532256

phil(292):

what is your windows version and language? btw, open the dll in a disassembler* and do a search for drawfocusrect and take a screenshot for me.

*http://hdasm.narod.ru

hi, i just tried to do this focus rectangle hack, but unfortunately not only my offset differs from your user32.dll version, but the code does too (only 8bff558bec are the same). so i asked google and found this thread (http://www.virtualplastic.net/msgboard/thread.php?forum=0&thread=27#message37)although its only for sp2, i replaced my 8b ff 55 8b ec with eb 42 55 8b ec, but i just get an error on startup, so could you give me an advise how i can find out the values needed for my version?

nathan(290):

i knew that. my "upcoming" hack is to remove the whole taskbar with the startmenu still working. it is different. but thx anyway.

hey, i saw that one of your "unfinished hacks" is to remove the start menu button.

in explorer.exe, stringtable 38 : delete the line that contains "start".

if the text is removed, so is the start button, but the windows-key still works to bring up the start menu where it normally shows up. if you change the text to a single space, you'll just have the start menu button logo but with no text.

this was tested by me with the classic start menu on xp and 2k3.

i will probably give up on that big icon,

i used filemon (a app from microsoft that enables you to see every file a .exe is reading/writing from) and checked every files that word loaded info from.

i then tried to change every icon, png, bmp and avi that looked like it could affect the big icon. it didnt help.

so i guess that it is hardcoded into one of those files, and since it isnt just changing color on something simple i guess trying to hex-edit it would be useless.

oh well atleast the taskbar-icon was changed ^^

just guessing but the big icon could be png, bmp or avi.

the files to change to get the other icons in taskbar:
wwlib.dll for word
and excel.exe and powerpnt.exe for exel and powerpoint (duh)


but now since you got me to start thinking about removing the big circle icon ;)

ive tried edit every icon that looks like it that i found in the program files folder ("common files" and "microsoft office") but no luck.

i also tried changing the greenish bitmaps in msores.dll, but it didnt do anything (i did however manage to change the background, bitmap 564).

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6797/abcraw.jpg

hehe. no problem. :)

oh i feel so stupid!!

(found out how to replace that icon (the blue one))

all i had to do was edit "wwlib.dll" (the reason i didnt find it was that iconsextract for some reason didnt find it, but when i search manually using reshacker i found it.

sorry about not doing a proper check before asking you :(

not really that one (well it would be fun if it could be changed :d, but im more concerned about the blue on in the bottom (is it called task bar?))

that big circle icon? i will try something tomorrow or sunday.

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/7026/94102975.jpg

ive searched around most of the internet, but so far i havnt found anyone who knows how to change it :(

so unless you happen to have any ideas im gonna give up on it

i don't use office. do you mean ms word in the office pack? a screenshot would be help. my brother have office 2007 so i can take a look at it later.

just wanted to check, do you have any idea how to change the office 2007 icons?
they stick out like sore thumb -__-

ok, thanks, it works now :)

stagnation(277):

download the zip file again. it will work.
i think i know why you got an error. because you copied the script from here and that is the problem. because the msgboard changes the letters. and it is important to have the shell.application with big "s" and big "a"... and so on with the other parts. like launch. (small "l") and var with small "v"...

http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/startup.zip

var launcher = new activexobject("shell.application");

wscript.sleep(0);
launcher.shellexecute("d:\\program files\\logitech\\setpoint\\setpoint.exe");

give me the error: line 1 char 1 error: 'activexobject' is undefined code: 800a1391
source: microsoft jscript runtime error

the same is the case if i try to start iexplorer

ok.
here is another startup script:

---
var launcher = new activexobject("shell.application");

wscript.sleep(2000);
launcher.shellexecute("c:\\program files\\internet explorer\\iexplore.exe");

wscript.sleep(2000);
launcher.shellexecute("c:\\program files\\something\\this.exe);
---

save as "startup.js". it works with paths with spaces in it.

oh i see. the wsh doesn't like the spaces in the path. like in the "program files". maybe there is a workaround. will update the script if i find one.

stagnation(273):

my startup script:
wshshell.run "c:/programs/miranda_im/miranda32.exe", 7
wshshell.run "c:/programs/popcorn/popcorn.exe", 7

make sure the slash is "/" not this "".
the ", 7" means it will run minimized. you can remove it.

i tried your delayed startup script and when i copied the target from a shortcut to a file and pasted it i got this error: the system cannot find the file specified. code: 80070002 source: (null) the default wshshell.run calc.exe worked but when i changed it to a correct program filr path it ceased to work :/

do you know why that is?

trine35(271):

personally i deleted that chart but good to know somebody got the idea to change that. if you want to share it you can paste here or make a topic here http://virtualplastic.net/msgboard/forum.php?forum=1

many thanks for this great site.

i never found a tutorial on how to change the colors of the drive properties pie chart (pink/blue). these colors can be change by hex editing shell32.dll.
if someone interested in that stuff, i would post the hex values.

bye and sorry for my bad english

hehe. :) will see..

thanks again des :)

btw i saw you writing on deviant art that you might release your vs. ofc you decide if you want or not but if you decide to then you got one person here who would appreciate it. ^^

sure. here it is: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=md2inv4i

hi again des, sorry to ask but i had a computercrash and lost things i hadnt backuped and wonder if you mind putting up the "media player classic seek bar hacks" again, it seems the links are off.

yeah. reshacker could cause corrupt headers in dll's sometimes. i should have thought that this could happen.

fixed it-apparently my logonui was corrupted even though it was still functioning.
all the best and thanks!

thanks for the reply. i'll stick with the $oem$ folder although it is not as "clean" as i would have liked.
thanks again.

well, i don't know how to resolve this. maybe by killing the system file checker? (delete > sfc.dll, sfc.exe, sfc_os.dll, sfcfiles.dll) but that could cause another problem(s). in example stopping the install process. :(

appears that reshacked files but not hex edited files can be added to i386 folder on cd.
error says it is not a valid windows image.
if anyone knows any different, please let me know.

just checked-there is no logonui.exe in sp3.cab. looks like i will have to use the $oem$ folder. might have a go using iexpress. i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to command prompt

jcarles compression bin-it generally works very well
i have sfc disabled-i think the problem is caused by not altering the logonui.exe in sp3.cab on cd.
btw, i tried putting it in the $oem$/$$/system32 folder and that did work!i will try the sp3.cab mod tomorrow-i'll let you know how i go.
you're a legend-thanks for replying.

robmil(258):

i don't know. i never tried it to integrate to the cd. maybe it has to do with the system file checker. it checks the file during the install and fails because it is altered.

have you compressed it with the windows make cab command? or with a 3rd party app?

i recently hex edited my logonui.exe to get rid of blue flash-works a treat (thanks for that!)
my problem is i'm trying to integrate it on a setup cd-during the install process it rejects the logonui.exe (it will not copy even though it has been cabbed with compression bin)
i've just had a thought-maybe i should put it uncompressed in the $oem$/$$/system32 folder.
any thoughts?

cool, thanks again!

my battery just went down hill this weekend, lol, gotta get a new one now.

so much for plan a, once i get a new battery, then i can finish the desktop battery status project.

here is the battery meter sample.
http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/batterymeter.hta

first of all run the hta to make sure it is working. the refresh interval is set to 60000 ms (updated every minutes, but you can change that. but do not set it to 1000 [1sec] because your computer will be slow. 1 min is fine.)

if it is working then simply rename the file to htm and put the file into your background. + you need this registry tweak to eliminate the active-x warning message.

windows registry editor version 5.00

[hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\internet settings\zones\0]
@=""
"1201"=dword:00000000

awesome, i like the v2 too, maybe i will use on my desktop, cause i like bother versions a lot, lol. needs to be a little darker for me of course, but i can handle that.

i ran the script, and wrote down what is output while pluggen in and running on battery...

-- plugged in --
availability: 2
battery status: 2
chemistry: 6
description: internal battery
design voltage: 12754 (millivolts?)
device id: 134sanyodell f51347
estimated run time: 71582788
name: dell f51347
power management capabilities: 1
power management supported: false

-- on battery --
availability: 3
battery status: 1
chemistry: 6
description: internal battery
design voltage: 11836 (millivolts?)
device id: 134sanyodell f51347
estimated run time: 47 (minutes)
name: dell f51347
power management capabilities: 1
power management supported: false

graphite v2 is on my devart page.

about the battery status. yes it is possible. i mean i found this script:
http://www.vbsedit.com/scripts/hardware/power/scr_362.asp

copy the script into a txt file then save as something.vbs, and run. if you see battery status popup messages then it is ok and working. i can't try it becasue i don't have battery. (= no popups on my computer)

so if it works then i will tell you what to modify to get it working in html file. (+ adding refresh intervals to the script)

yeah, i was afraid of that, but i can live with it i guess, lol.
i am looking forward to v2 for sure.

i really like the simple info on your desktop pics. i understand the basics of how it is done, but i was wondering if it is possible to show my battery status on the desktop in a similar fashion (since i am on a laptop) with the html+vbscript. i like to keep installed apps yo a bare minimum and i like the clean look of your desktop.

max(251):

hi. yes it is static. defined in stringtable 4 > string 49. i tried with some placeholders like you said (%s) but didn't work. :( (just type something else there. like your computer name, workgroup name or something else related to your computer. i.e. amd etc.. hehe. :d )

btw, i am working on graphite v2. :) this one is with horizontal userpanels.

hey, love your work! i just found your graphite logon screen, which i really like except it is a little light for my taste, when i fixed, darkened it up a bit.

but, i was wondering, on the preview pic on your da, the accounts have "account type: administrator" at the bottom... (string table 49)
is that a static string?
is there any sort of variable placeholders (%s, %d) i can use in the string table?

thanks a lot.

i decided to put the hex editing away for a while, i don't really feel comfortable with it right now, instead i did some further basic modding and uploaded a screenshot to da: http://linearradiation.deviantart.com/art/the-painful-exodus-117077680 in case you are interested. again thanks for your help

ok, thank you, the 8b is probably a typo: i will review that and as for the extra zero i think that's due to the human factor too. i tried to copy the string it should be and paste it into the replace window but that didn't work so i had to write it manually.

my user32.dll in hdasm. (my another screenshot was with win32dasm)
http://i39.tinypic.com/ke6dmr.png

the 90's means no operation that is ok, but the first part looks a bit different in your screenshot. but i dont know if it is a problem or not. is your win sp2 or sp3?


oh i see... your first byte is 8b instead of b8! and in yours there is one more 00 before the 90's.

mine: b801000000c2080090....
yours: 8b01000000c208000090....

hi, it's me again.
first off all i'd like to say that the my documents icon ow looked like it should (i e modded) and that i have had no errors or system updates reverting to the old icons.

but i have got another issue at hand now: i was trying to remove the annoying selection rectangle and i used the hdasm to locate the offset in the dll and there i copied all the values that should be replaced and replaced them with the new values, but upon opening it in hdasm it didn't look at all like your picture.

so i took the backup user32.dll, backed it up and then did the same thing again, but this time i took print screens:
hdasm: http://www.imagehut.eu/images/31946user32.jpg
finding the values to replace in cygnus free: http://www.imagehut.eu/images/10801user322.jpg
replacing them: http://www.imagehut.eu/images/38049user323.jpg
the result in cygnus: http://www.imagehut.eu/images/28046user324.jpg
the result in hdasm: http://www.imagehut.eu/images/30753user325.jpg

have i done anything wrong or should it be like this?
thanks in advance stag

ok, i have now disabled the security center and windows update and wiped the dll cache (after backing it up to another partition) and i'm now going to replace it
and then go to bed, hopefully this will last. :-)

thanks
stag

dllcache is in the system32 folder. it has special attributes, so it is invisible. just type it into the address or the run: c:\windows\system32\dllcache if you want to delete it completely only delete its contents. you cant delete the folder. (even if you can it will be back after a reboot)

disabling windows update is easy. run > then type services.msc. locate automatic updates and set it to disable. i also disabled the security center.

thanks for the link those pop ups are really annoying
and for dll cache: do you know where it's located? because i can't find my cache, i have looked through the subfolders of shell32 and _i did a conventional window search with no result, and disabling the win update would surely help too, that's easier to do right?

well, in my computer i turned off the windows update and the whole wu service and deleted the dllcache, so i never encountered those problems.

but you could try change the file in dllcache folder first, then use the replacer.
also you can eliminate that update warning that appears every 5 mins:

http://www.techbrave.com/2008/09/disable-automatic-reboot-after-windows-update/

it reverts the hacked dlls but it leaves my hacked explorer.exe in peace and when i shut down my windows without installing the updates it installed it at start up the following boot instead and i then got the restart now or later autorestart in 5 minutes window popping up every now and then :/

should i rebuild the cache before or after replacing the dll file?

about the reverting problem.

what update? from the internet? or just the system tries to revert the hacked dll?

stagnation(239):

hi. then try to rebuild the iconcache with tweakui. i hate duplicate icons because sometimes hard to find the correct one.

edit: i went through the whole system32 folder with icon extractor (awesome program) without finding the my documents icon other than in the automatically generated shell32.dll.backup file from the replacer

hi i just went through your windows dll listing about all icons and such and i have reshacked explorer.exe and shell32 removing or replacing a lot of icons (including my documents) and after rebooting everything works except the my documents icon. when i went through tune up utilities system icon replacment program i found the mydocs dll which contained a my documents and a my pictures icon and i reshack both of them, replaced and rebooted but the my documents icon is still the default yellow one :( (the tune up utilities icon replacement works next to prfecte but i thought that replacing the dlls would be fool proof, and no it can't change the my documents icon either :( )

and one more thing: everytime i reboot windows wants to install an update, i e revert the hacked dlls to the default eventhough i used the replacer and the dlls should be replaced in the dll cache too.

do you know what could be the problem or any other system files that contains the my documents icon?

thanks in advance
stag

:) got it.

for some reason i didnt change it in shell32.dll even if i was certain i had done just that. oh well everyone makes misstakes now and then.

iconsextractor really helped out on finding, im now in love with that tool ^^

thanks again des

thanks des, the reg-file did its thing :)

ill post back once i found out what icon that is used for explorer.

hi.

the best way to change that icon, if you just reshack every icon that looks like what you want to change. :d but seriously i have no idea where is that icon. (mydocs.dll? shell32.dll?) do a search for it with iconextractor. (tools, utils)

i updated the nomenubar.zip , download it again and apply. but an alternate way is to reshack the menu. (deleting the whole menu)
the complete explorer menu is in browselc.dll > 263 (explorer), 266 (explorer state 2. when you click the addressbar this menu will be used otherwise the 263 used.) and 267 (iexplorer).

http://des.virtualplastic.net/downloads/nomenubar.zip

hi again des :)

i gave up on the 3d thingy but i have problems with some other things. if you dont mind i would love to get some ideas/tips on these as i couldnt find and answers to these no mather how much i googled.

1) the first problem is with explorer.exe's icon.

for some reason i cant reshack explorer.exe. and i cant change its icon.

http://img523.imageshack.us/my.php?image=70130162jj6.jpg


2) the 2nd problem is that i dont know how to remove/hide the menu for explorer when it is opened as "explorer" (here is what i meant: http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=44707013yz8.jpg ).

i followed your tips on the site on how to remove the menu with a register change, but i dont know how to make that change for explorer aswell.

picture: http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=92323997ci6.jpg

thanks in advance, also, i love that mpc-hack :)

sweet, thanks for putting up the mpc :) (i esp like the v2)

well it works thank you :d

i can see that you use the borders, but i've a 0px border window and that looks disgusting with this small border

thanks

btw. great site, modding my server the whole night :d

maybe it isn't that you want but you can get rid of the 3d colors system widely by using a reg tweak. (change the
buttonshadow, buttondkshadow, buttonlight, buttonhilight values in regedit)

although for me this is not the solution because i want that colors but not everywhere.

maybe windows blinds works in a different way and change things in the memory instead of the registry. i don't know.

hi,
i saw a few post about the 3d border and i think i found what its causes
http://bayimg.com/lamnfaabp

this is windowblinds but its still the same
the problem is, when i try to get rid of it, make it white for example the border becomes black

and i dont know why

media player classic seek bar hacks:

http://rapidshare.com/files/183739367/mpc_seekbar_hack.zip.rename.html
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nuuq4q

thanks. but you know what? i did it! :d i mean i did something. i can only use the system colors defined in the registry. it means i can't add new colors.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2yozhok.png

thanks for the answer, i wish you luck with mpc and whatever you do atm :)

john(225):

nothing new news about the mpc hack because i focused on other things latelly. but i didn't give up. i can change the seekbar height, the seek button width and height. but still can't change that damn 3d color.

i even tried to recompile (with ms visual studio) the mpc from the source code but hell, this visual studio is nothing but pain in my ***. :) i couldn't recompile the app because i didn't have the sdk component and other things and always got errors, so i uninstalled that damn visualstudio and i never will reinstall it again. ehh.

about win7 and vista:
i haven't tried vista or win7 yet. and i think if here is the time to switch i would rather try linux. but i don't know yet. but for now (and for the next 2-3 years), i am good with xp. (i hope)

i don't know anything about customizing vista or win7. sorry.

hi des, i was wondering two things:

1: have you gotten any further on the mediaplayer classic "hack"? because the only thing i dont like about it is is that bar.

2: do you know any site that works with customizing windows 7 (or vista, since they are pretty simillar?). i am thinking about a lot of things i would want to change, but mostly its "windows photo viewer", i want to get rid of the bar at the top.

and also are you thinking of changing os? if so, to what, and why.

it is standard 07_55 caps. similar to haxcorp and the terminal font in win xp.
http://www.dafont.com/haxrcorp-s8.font

what fonts are you using in the header of your ui for menus and the captionbar?

kamykaze(221):

i will see what can i do. but momentary i don't know how to remove that.

screenshot:

http://img152.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scrnshtdu9.jpg

i'm trying to get rid of what the cursor points to.
notice how on the right side files list only the disc drives show up. tweakui removed control panel here, as wanted, but not from the tree.

well, i don't know. but a screenshot would be useful. maybe i misunderstood something.

if tweakui is supposed to also remove it from the tree then there's a bug in my machine. i reticked/unticked "my computer icons" in tweakui and it makes cp show up in the files/right pane but it doesn't reflect in folder/tree/left view.

does that work differently for you?
my machine is legit xp sp3, tweakui v2.10.

kamykaze(217):

hi. did you mean the control panel from the my computer? because if you remove that it also will be removed from the tree. (tweakui)

hi!
kudos for your site! excellent hacks, great tips. thank you also for pointing the way to some excellent freeware, some i already knew, others i'm sure i'll love,all of them lost recently on a freak murphy's-law-timed disc failure.

question: how to remove control panel from the folders pane/tree view in windows explorer? searched the web, combed through the registry but cannot find neither the answer nor an indication that it's not possible. may be necessary to hack explorer.exe?

des(215):
ok will check it :)

goshko(214):

yeah of course. you can use aa till then. it is almost like the color you said. almost. :d

des(213):
thanks for the fast reply, let me know if you find out how the get the color :)

goshko(212):

font size was originally 58, try 55 or 51 or something else. the lower the value the bigger the font.
about the color: unfortunately it is not that easy. :( will see that later.

des(211):
looking good des :) however i have some questions: first the font of the status, 5e is too small for me, i played around a bit with the values but can't figure anything that would fit, what would be the next font size of 5e? and what will be 2 points bigger?

and about the color of the progress bar, what would be the value of this color #20bac2?

goshko(210):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vb4mac
beta version because it has a little bug with the positioning thing. (i hope i can fix it later) i also changed the status text font to ms shell dlg (size 8). (it means your system font will be used there) but if you want to change the font: it is at offset 3600b8, and the font size is at offset 3600ee. (now it is 5e)

the status bar size is in the 10022 dialog. don't set its height to more than 14 because you will experience a little bug.

at offset a6462 the 3a means the color of the progressbar or seekbar. now it is brown-red or something. e1 = red, f2 green, f5 = brown, 0a = blue1, 0b = blue2, 90 = olive, 40 = white, ff = black...

des(209):
great, can't wait for both versions!

goshko(208):
well, there are plenty of hex values that have to be altered, so i will rather upload the hacked version of the latest mpc version. (6.4.9.0.) of course later then i will publish the hex offsets and all things to do if you want to do some modifications. :)

i've tried to remove the volume control's 3d colors, but no success yet. maybe later.

des(207):
yep, thats pretty cool!! well done :) would you be so kind and share the steps, to get there?

goshko(201):

http://i33.tinypic.com/2hp3804.png
well, as you can see i am close to something. this line actually moves with the time. it is not quite what i wanted but it is very cool.

thanks for the tips and the quick reply, ill try out the tips and write back once im (hopefully) sucessfull. exams comming up so it might take a while.

part of the fun is the trial and error process ;) (but its timeconsuming)

another idea:

in your visualstyle there are these colors:
edgedkshadowcolor, edgefillcolor, edgehighlightcolor, edgelightcolor, edgeshadowcolor

these colros are also responsible for the 3d colors. by editing them, you can eliminate the 3d stuff. afaik.

in your visualstyle there must be something somewhere in toolbar section in bitmaps or in the text code. like:

bgtype = borderfill
bordersize = 1
fillcolor = 214 215 210
textcolor = 128 128 128

my next tip would be editing the shellstyle, but i noticed you dont use shellstyle.
in shell style you can edit the border around the explorer folder view, add margins and more...

about the explorer.exe.manifest:
it does changes but these changes are not conspicuous in case of the explorer.exe. i mean you can see it when you try to delete a shell folder from my computer or in some other cases. even when using a vs normally the dialog button isn't skinned, it has the classic look with 3d borders, but after using the manifest you can see the button skinned like the others in the system. or you can try it with some old programs that look much more like with the classic theme even if you are using a visualstyle. (buttons and controlls are not skinned, etc) in that case the manifest file do the trick.

here is a good example: http://raymond.cc/images/errordelete.png
the caption (title) skinned but not the button. with the manifest the button will be skinned too.

if you can't find the reason what casues the 3d border in your explorer window, you can send me (upload somewher the style. i.e: sendspace.com) and i will take a look at it. :)

it is not problem at all. i am obsessed with reshacking and customizing. :)

i read through my msg one more time and i found it to be a little unclear, so ill add this picture so it is clear what 3d-border (or effekt) im talking about.

pic:
http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=49718701yt5.jpg

ofc im not trying to make you solve my problem, im just wondering if you happen to know what file is causing this and if its a systemfile some tips on how to edit it.

hi, first off: i love your site, ive found some many good tweaks :)

the question:
i was wondering if it is possible to remove the 3d effekt in explorer folders.

here is a pic that illustrates it:
http://img252.imageshack.us/my.php?image=27289120yk3.jpg

(im comparing it to foobar, which doesnt have the 3d effekt. and i put in 2 of the same windows, one which i highlighted the 3d effekt with red (and 2 things in purple, but you can ignore those))


what i tried:
i found your tip in the faq about how to remove 3d borders on the classic skin, but i use a visual theme.

i found a tip to use manifest-files, but for some reason that doesnt work for me.

maybe the problem can be fixed with the visual theme, but so far i havnt found any solution.

question (again):
so i was wondering if you have any idea about how to remove it, changing the colours would be a nice change, but if possible i want to remove it completely (so it looks more like the foobar)

if you think it should be solved by using manifest-files then tell me and ill fiddle around untill i get it to work (as it is now i tried to put the manifestfile i downloaded from your site in the same folder as explorer.exe and renamed the manifestfile to explorer.exe.manifest) but it didnt change anything.

hey des! great results, keep me posted please :)

goshko(196):

well, i did some hex-editing and came up with this. there is still a 3d border around the seekbar button but it is far more nicer than the original one.
img: http://i33.tinypic.com/345oohx.png

i can do a lot of things such as recoloring the white trackbar, resizing the seekbar button, resizing the margins, resizing the height/width of the trackbar and seekbar button. etc.. :) i am on the right way. i hope i will find the correct hexcode to remove the border.

des

thanks very much mate, i will start with the 3dcc and see how i go.

to go iconless completely as you said seems like a good idea.
as i will keep saying the look you achieved is so much what i am looking for.

i has common looks to afterstep looks really slick.
thanks again des when i get more time i shall put some of your techniques into action.
it's about time we looked more at moving away from standard windows it is annoying that they restrict it so much.
need more flexibility to customise.

speak again soon.

combrown

combrown(197):

well, you can use the classic style (theme) or you can use a visualstyle (.msstyles). i prefer using visualstyle. in visualstyle you can change a lot of things, like the button or window borders in example. you can find a lot of minimalistic style and moreover you can change things in them. deviantart is a good place to find a minimalistic style.

but to achieve 3d colorless in the classic theme, you can use 3d color changer ( google for it. also known as 3dcc. examples: http://customize.org/3dcc ) or by simply editing the registry. the 3d border colors in registry: buttonshadow, buttondkshadow, buttonlight, buttonhilight in hkey_current_user\control panel\colors. if you change these colors to the same color the 3d border will be gone.

in my system i use my own visualstyle and to match my minimalistic style i reshacked the system. (basically i just removed all the icons from everywhere, and resized some of the dialogs to make it more smaller and compact, and removed the unnecessary items, etc.)

the hard part was to go completely iconless. i had to reshack a lot of dlls and exe files. it means about 250-300 files / ~90mb.

hi des

thanks for replying, like i said your work on the windows interface is excellent.

i try to use linux quite a bit as i am always looking for a different look.
from what i have seen you mention you like clean simple interfaces.
i could not agree with you more.
nothing like an efficient stylish interface to work from.

if i am to do do the reshacking i am not sure really where to start.
main thing i would like to achieve first is the flat non 3d windows effect that classic style has.

do you have to go through the system and change alot to get the results all round or is there a fairly straight forward mod you can do, or is it quite involved.

cheers des

combrown

oh well :( hope the guys from mpc project will hear us :)

yes it worked. but messes up my other system colors too. :( so it's not the best way to change it.

well. i don't know what to do. i looked inside the disassembled code but found nothing related. :( + i deleted the msvbvm.dll's and mpc didn't give me error message, so it's not the msvbvm. it is the mpc itself what does the coloring / drawing.

the only way to change it if we rewrite the program code and then assembling the software ourselves. ehhe... :( or i don't know.

ok :)

i don't know. 20 minutes and then i can try it out myself too. (can't log off at the moment)

should i change buttonshadow?

yeah, i tried changing the bitmaps, nothing... i also tried turning the option to not skin the player controls, but that change nothing :(

i don't know.

but why don't we just change the syscolors in the registry to see if there is any change in the seekbar? buttonshadow, buttondkshadow, buttonlight, buttonhilight in the hkey_current_user\control panel\colors

i can't do it right now, only later.

well, maybe the hex edit will work?

btw there are seekbar type bitmaps in the mpc too in the file section. but changing them also do nothing. :(

well...
i am now reading the source code of the mpc. and found something in playerseekbar.cpp

according to this it uses the system colors to draw the seekbar. i try to locate the correct code in mpc and hexediting it.

184 colorref
185 white = getsyscolor(color_window),
186 shadow = getsyscolor(color_3dshadow),
187 light = getsyscolor(color_3dhilight),
188 bkg = getsyscolor(color_btnface);

great :) still there probably is a bitmap for it, we just can't find it, seeing this bitmap in browserui.dll. well, let's hope something comes out of this :)

yeah, i knew about it but haven't tried it yet. yeah, it would be cool if that slidebar can be skinnable by a bitmap. plus the whole trackbar.

now i am reading the feature request of mpc hc.

interesting, but you're right i really don't know if it would help. btw did u know about this project > http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net they revived "media player classic" and are working on new versions, maybe we should drop them a line?

yeah. :(

btw, my idea was this.
the system has msvbvm50.dll and msvbvm60.dll in the system32 folder. this is for visual basic applications version 5 and 6. in that dll there is a typelib resource in which there are a lot of data/settings for controlling the vb apps. (borders, colors, etc)

here is a snippet of its code:

vbinactivetitlebartext = -2147483629;
//color of text in an inactive caption.
vbinactivecaptiontext = -2147483629;
//highlight color for 3d display elements.
vb3dhighlight = -2147483628;
//dark shadow color for three-dimensional display elements.
vb3dface = -2147483633;
//color of automatic window shadows.
vb3dshadow = -2147483632;
//darkest shadow.
vb3ddkshadow = -2147483627;
//second lightest of the 3d colors after vb3dhilight.
vb3dlight = -2147483626;
//color of text in tooltips.
vbinfotext = -2147483625;
//background color of tooltips.
vbinfobackground = -2147483624;

but then just realized this is for only vb apps and i don't know if mpc is written in vb or not. and moreover a bit hard to edit those values. (we can only edit in hexeditor, etc) but i will give it a try later...

yeah, i actually found the bitmaps in browseui.dll, but they change nothing :(

oh. i have got an idea. i will let you know if i am succeeded in changing that. :)

goshko:

i don't know how to change, but i really wish to change that too. that 3d button makes me feel ... :) you know. it's just isn't nice and doesn't fit in my "3d borderless" style. i prefer the flat style.

i guess it's created by the mpc or the system.. i don't know. :(

hey des :)
do you by any chance have any idea how to remove.change this > http://i33.tinypic.com/aku2wg.jpg it's a control on media player classic.. but i figure it gets this control from some system bitmap.

hmm okay, thanks, i'll chek it out

as far as i know you can't remove the button, only the bitmap. perhaps with some hexediting (srchui.dll ?), i don't know. because it's on a toolbar or something. and that is created in "realtime" by the system. it's not a dialog or something. (imho) although there are some dialogs in shell32.dll related to the search panel...

btw, i found bitmap in browseui.dll too. bitmap 563 and 564. (iexplorer)

no i meant only the stuff between the two separators like the buttons and the separators too :) the ones i have in red

you mean the whole bar? i don't know. i've never tried it before.
i will see what can i do and let you know.

thanks, des, and is there a way to remove the whole thing, i edited the search dialog but these buttons are on a different panel.. i don't know which one

goshko:

shel32.dll > bitmap 135 and 136. you can try to delete it or recolor both bitmaps.

hey des! i was wondering if you, or anyone, had any idea on how to get rid of these: http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=75591253dz3.jpg any help is welcome, thanks in advance!

hi.

if i am correct, the default (blue) style is called royale in mce. (in %windir%\resources\themes\royale) have you tried to reshack it? or replace it with custom one?

hello
here bas from holland

i see you are good with colors

can you help me
is there a way to change the ugly blue color in xp mce

every page is blue
i would like it to be black or grey

i am searching for so long
nobody knows

maybe you ????


thanks already

regards bas

xibad:

i've also tried to place the thumbnail display left, but there is no solution yet.
+ adding icons to the details(text), i don't think it is possible. (if it's that you want)

custom toolbar button in explorer:
http://virtualplastic.net/msgboard/thread.php?forum=0&thread=151
"hmm, easiest way i can think of is to use the links toolbar."
just create a link for the reg* file. one for show file menu and one for disable file menu. or you can use the favorites menu also to do that.
*=http://des.virtualplastic.net/tips.html#notoolbar

hi!

i'm a customization / hacking fan. i like the reshacks & mods section that you have, and i have noticed that you have shellstyle.dll mods, amongst them, one that brings only the details pane in fixed size to the bottom. it's very interesting. i would like to mod my shellstyle to be this way, but with some differences. i mean i was a webview fan in win2k or win9x and the display thumbnails is useful (in my oppinion). is there any way to hack the shellstyle details to display thumbnails on the right (not up the text) and make it iconic (showing file icon, for example)? i would like the know-how :)

by the way, it's also possible to add an option to the toolbar in exporer to activate/deactivate file edit view etc toolbar? i tried to follow your tips, but i got a little lost :d

any help would be appreciatted. thanks :)

p.d. : sorry for my english, i'm from spain.

well, i stick to the "blank" boot screen for now. :) ...and will see later what can i hack more in ntoskrnl.exe.

thanks for the fony. needs a little reshacking, but it's a good "light-weight" software.

oh, i was wrong there on saying the .fon should not have any special characters. it does. only that the char limit is 255.

that's great! your screen looks uniform. i just wanted the xp msg to go that's why i maintained the palette you gave, even for the chkdsk screen. your vista boot bitmap looks cool even with lesser colors. but i thought changing it at this stage would require more time and energy, so i'd stick to the present. i'm now resizing the progress bar to match the xp layout so i hope that might solve the problem. if not, then i'd use the screen you gave at ►http://i35.tinypic.com/kezqqp.png.

on the font, i guess there are many fon varieties in the fonts folder. all .fon, but some are of the type terminal, some fixedsys and some system. the vga852.fon is terminal type so any replacement has to be of the same kind. my close friend posted me on this. though i'm yet to try it. one good free .fon editor is fony 1.3.2

►http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/fon_software/

i haven't used it but one of my good acquaintances into dtp jobs has. he says it's pretty neat software.

but i guess any bitmap font with the name vga852.fon would do as long as it adheres to the type terminal and is not heavily loaded. just the characters on the keyboard (no special characters) and size around 5-8kb.

and according to this screen >
http://i35.tinypic.com/5f3iaw.png

this is the font that used in the check disk type boot screen. i succesfully crashed my test windows (vmware) by changing that font. :d so, be careful. i need a proper fon editor or something.

well, finally i had time to do this. here it is;
http://des.virtualplastic.net/mods.html#bootscreen

i wasn't in the "reshacking mood" lately, but here is what i got so far:
http://i35.tinypic.com/kezqqp.png

here is the bitmap version if you want it:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tmogj6

i know, the colors are different a little bit.

just a bit of sniffing, that's all! i got lucky i did it very shortly. nothing much.

anyway now having changed the bootscreen to vista lookalike, here's what i got:

►http://bal.ran.googlepages.com/kernel_files

i've also mailed jjoelc to ask if he has any clue as to what's going on. hope you would also take some time to look into this. thanx mate for all the help and guidance.

auch,. i was aware of those sp2 and sp3 cab files. i don't know why it didn't come to my mind. ehh... but you figured it out, so it's ok then. :)

that's no headache for you, i suppose. i maintain the backup restoration files and folders because the system i use is common to my roommates. since i'm the partial-sighted among blind ones, i have to make sure nothing gets disturbed. so that's more task for me.

and des, i did manage to locate the ntkrpamp and ntkrnlmp backups. they're in c:\windows\driver cache\i386 folder inside sp3.cab - since i've sp3. j.f.i., there're two other files in it, sp2.cab (for sp2 users) and driver.cab (in case of system restore). what i did was to extract sp3.cab files to a folder. i then backed-up the sp3.cab and then copied over my files to this folder overwriting the files extracted. then i used makecab.exe to create a new sp3.cab. that's it! now replacer works or not, i've got windows xp replacing my own files overwriting "it's" own files!

anyway, thanx for the inputs and the guidance.

i haven't done anything yet with ntoskrnl.exe.

i have only ntoskrnl.exe and ntkrnlpa.exe in my system. and there are no dllcache folder, because i deleted it. (its content)

btw i have 2 xp's so replacing system files is just easy as copying files. one for default tasks (this is the hacked one, using it right now) and one for using for my "haxperiments", trying programs, etc.

i think the ntoskrnl files are more protected than the other system files, because even replacer can't do the job for me when i tried.

hi des,

how're you doing?

i've managed to mod the ntoskrnl.exe with the original vista boot screen. check out ►http://bal.ran.googlepages.com/kernel_files.

there are four nt kernel files:

1. ntoskrnl.exe - original filename is ntkrnlmp.exe

2. ntkrnlpa.exe - original filename is ntkrpamp.exe

3. ntkrnlmp.exe - windows protects ntoskrnl.exe by copying this file over ntoskrnl.

4. ntkrpamp.exe - windows protects ntkrnlpa.exe by copying this file over ntkrnlpa.

as you can see i've managed to replace almost all the file locations of all the four files.

but,

i) ntokrnlpa.exe and ntoskrnl.exe are not getting replaced in system32 folder.

ii) ntkrnlmp.exe and ntkrpamp.exe are not getting replaced in system32\dllcache folder.

no matter how many times i tried, windows always replaces the two files in dllcache with the original ones and then replaces ntoskrnl and ntkrnlpa in system32 with the ones in dllcache.

i'm not getting it. as you can see from the jpg at my page, i've already successfully replaced them in other locations. i've already changed (with hexworkshop) the palette inside all the four files exactly as the vista boot palette you gave. so why is this happening?

hoping you would help me out.

thanx and regards,

balaji

hi des,

you're perfect! and you maybe right in saying it could be a kernel limitation. i don't know either. but since i've been thru dos programming days, i do know that 640x480-8bit screen can definitely display 256 colors. i'm trying hard to disassemble the ntoskrnl.exe using masm32 and trying to understand what goes on during the preboot. you might already have masm32, but in case you don't here are the links:

►http://www.movsd.com/masm.htm
►http://www.masm32.com/masmdl.htm

i guess that's the only way to get around - reverse engineer the kernel itself, though i don't know much about 32bit assembly. i'm trying to get some knowledge on ntoskrnl.exe on the internet. these might help:

►http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/tracefs/
►http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/content/356/05/1.html

changing palette colors was a bit difficult, esp the swapped red and blue parts. but since it's limited to 16 colors, wasn't much of a headache. well, i hope you succeed soon.

also by manipulating these palette colors in ntoskrnl.exe, we can change the boot colors:

00 00 00 00 15 1a 20 00 46 46 46 00 d2 3e 2d 00 01 65 53 00 05 35 b2 00 7e 7e 7e 00 00 92 89 00 fc 7f 5e 00 20 6b f7 00 ff a6 8d 00 04 dc 8e 00 1b bc f3 00 bc bc bc 00 fc fc fc 00 ff ff ff

maybe it is possible to add more colors to it. i don't know. but i will try that.

well, maybe it is something limitation during the boot process. and that 640x480 image stretched to higher resolution also looks terrible. and the font... auch...
i don't know if it possible to use higher color palette or higher resolution. but i am keep trying to alter the logon screen to the maximum i can.

anyway, there has been some progress in reshacking boot screen:

while booting:
the microsoft (r) windows (r) ... text > ntsokrnl.exe > message table
the x system processor text > ntoskrnl.exe > messagetable
+
the checking file system text: > autochk.exe > message table
the the volume is clean text: > autochk.exe message table
the windows has finished checking the disk text > ulib.dll > message table

hey des,

now the only task for me is to get hold of paint shop pro and start modding the last samurai. but one question: why did microsoft choose a 16 color palette for the bitmap. as far as i've got my info, the preboot screen operates in 640x480--8bit mode so there're already 256 colors to delve into. i was wondering why couldn't the palette be increased to 256 colors? it might be hard-coded into the exe but i sure hope that could be hacked too. can you figure that one out? i know i've already asked from you and i hope i'm not asking for more.

thanx for the guidance and help.

well. yes, all the bitmaps are in the ntoskrnl.exe bitmap 6, 7, 15. you need a 16 colors palette to edit the bitmaps. here is a palette:
http://www.virtualplastic.net/download/hacks/xp_boot.zip

btw more help here:
http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/logo_scr.html