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Hacking Your Start Button
Hacking your start button is an easy yet stylish way to customize your Windows desktop. What you will be doing is editing the explorer.exe file in your C:\Windows directory to change both the start button text and the windows icon. Mine looks like this.
What you will need to hack your start button is:
1. Windows XP
2. ResourceHacker (available here)
3. New Icon for Start Button (a 25x20 .bmp file, you may need to do some editing in paint)
WARNING! THIS CHANGES THE START BUTTON FOR ALL WINDOWS USERS ON YOUR SYSTEM
-To begin you need to open ResHacker then open up your explorer.exe file in your C:\Windows. Make sure and back up your explorer.exe first, name it something like backexplorer in case worse comes to worse.
-Now when you open up explorer.exe there will be several files along the left hand side. Open up the "String Table" folder then the #37 folder. Now click on the file that says 1033.
-In this file you will find a varialbe that reads "start". Now just highlight and change the text to what ever you want, but not too long or your start button will be outta wack.
-Next your need to compile the script you just made by clicking the "compile script" button in the toolbar.
-Now you are gonna say "Wait a minute my button didnt change!" Dont worry it wont change until you replace explorer.exe with the file you are editing which you can do after you change your icon, so CHILL OUT!
-Next collapse the "String Table" folder and open the "Bitmap" folder, then folder #143, then file 1033
-Once you are at file 1033, go to the menu bar, actions, then replace bitmap. Here you need to find your new icon on your system and then click the "Replace" button.
-After all your changes have been made, you can save your edited explorer.exe file in your C:\Windows folder, but do not name it explorer.exe, that already exists, so name it newexplorer.exe.
-Now we need to replace the explorer.exe file, to do that we need to boot Windows in safe mode with command prompt enabled. To do this you can either press F8 during the Windows boot or if that doesnt work you can restart your system while windows is loading (not recomended, but hey it works). So once you get into the windows logon screen, login as the Administrator (there shouldnt be a password).
-Once your in, command prompt should load so navigate to your windows directory by typing "cd C:\Windows". Next copy your newexplorer over the old explorer by typing "copy newexplorer.exe explorer.exe". It will ask you if you want to overwrite say yes.
-Once that is all done restart by typing "shutdown -r" and restart your computer.
-BOOM! your start button is now completly customized
