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#11
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
Mayayana wrote:
It wouldn't be possible to edit an icon in a system file due to permissions. Think how much an OS hates it when you do that :-) Windows File Protection, signed system files (loader can detect that the signing is invalid). Trying to do that while Windows Defender is watching. It'll be the HAL9000 all over again. People have been trying to do this since uxtheme.dll in Windows XP. But if you need a hobby... If you succeed, you'll be famous. You might even end up with your own wanted poster. Paul |
#12
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
Arlen Holder wrote:
Two fundamentally basic Windows icon-editing questions: (A) How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs? https://i.postimg.cc/43GKMY2Z/icon01.jpg (B) Do you know _why_ the icon *changed* when viewed as a "large icon"? https://i.postimg.cc/mrVr58FN/icon-ico.jpg I was building a new shortcut for a multi-killswitch just now... TARGET=%comspec% /c %Windir%\System32\taskkill.exe /im "prog1.exe" /t /f & %Windir%\System32\taskkill.exe /im "prog2.exe" /t /f Where the icon I liked was inside the Windows system32 DLL: %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll Only I wanted to overlay the classic angled red stripe across it. o So I screenshotted it as a "large" icon so I could edit it as an ICO file Lo and behold... o https://i.postimg.cc/43GKMY2Z/icon01.jpg The glove icon _changed_ right under my very own eyes! o It was a "globe" when viewed as a small icon... o It it _changed_ to a "dual-pane" when viewed as a larger icon. Why? o Has that ever happened to you? Why does Windows do that? o Have you noticed Windows _changes_ the icon depending on viewing size? Anyway, I wasn't able to get the small icon large without it changing, so I proceeded to use the large icon (which is a completely different icon!) just to test the proof of concept of creating the icon from inside the DLL. (1) I displayed the icon using "large icons" (which changed the icon!) (2) I screenshotted it and opened it up in Irfanview freeware for edit (3) In Irfanview I cropped with control+y & with control+shift+y (4) In Irfanview I resized to 32x32 pixels as per the thread below (5) I added a red stripe (which was the original goal) (6) And I saved it as a *.ico icon file format from Irfanview https://i.postimg.cc/mrVr58FN/icon-ico.jpg Notice, in a sense, I failed to edit the original icon, so, the question remains apropos as to whether you can tell me, and the rest of us so that all benefit, how you would change the original globe icon from inside the Windows system DLL. Resource Hacker, system32.dll, icon group 200, the biggest one is 48x48, Ordinal name 2317 and 2320. So now you know the names. Go up to Icon and open 2317 or 2320 and save as icon. I used to replace them on XP. Have not tried on 7 or 10. |
#13
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 22:49:31 -0000 (UTC), Arlen Holder wrote:
The only remaining question is that of "transparent background"... SOLVED: By experimentation, I was able to easily transparize icon backgrounds. All you have to do is tell Irfanview to save the ico file with a transparent background and that's it (the PNG transparent background didn't work). Your main freeware photo editor has to handle ico files with a transparent background, where mine didn't, but that was ok because Irfanview can pretty much read anything & then save that as an ico with transparent background. The icon I chose to edit & then transparize is the "magnifying glass" icon: o %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll {shell32_22_4.ico} It was so easy, I'll just show the screenshots to illustrate the steps: o https://i.postimg.cc/K8Rj3yYs/icon09.jpg o https://i.postimg.cc/YSFS8fY6/icon10.jpg o https://i.postimg.cc/cHMLGxD6/icon11.jpg o https://i.postimg.cc/Df6wCzJM/icon12.jpg -- Note, since this was a test, I didn't bother matching the sizes of the old to new icon, which changed slightly in size between before & after editing. |
#14
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:05:39 -0500, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Resource Hacker, system32.dll, icon group 200, the biggest one is 48x48, Ordinal name 2317 and 2320. So now you know the names. Go up to Icon and open 2317 or 2320 and save as icon. I used to replace them on XP. Have not tried on 7 or 10. Thanks for the advice to try resource hacker freewa o http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/ The high cost of freeware is in two things: a. Finding the best (which takes advice from helpful folks like you) b. Testing them out (which is kind of sort of what I like to do) On their web site, they document the same (or similar) icon as mine: http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/rh_icon.png http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/rh_main_menu.png So others can just click, the version 5.1.7 exe is apparently he o http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/reshacker_setup.exe And the ZIP file apparently he o http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/resource_hacker.zip From just skimming the web page, this seems like a powerful tool. o With uses far beyond editing of icon ico files. However, apparently, with Resource Hacker, we can export the icon files out of the system DLLs, which we also did with the tested Icon Explorer. Hence, I think, if I understood correctly in my skim of the resource hacker web page, the related added value is we can likely use it to IMPORT our modified icon back into the Windows system DLL, although that may cause permission issues (which Paul and others mentioned M$ might not like). I installed Resource Manager, and clicked about, and opened up the file %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll but was unsuccessful and gave up after a minute or two as about the only thing that I can't (yet) do is _add_ the newly modified icon to the original Windows system DLL, which might not work anyway. -- The extremly high cost of freeware is in effort needed to find the best! |
#15
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
"Mayayana" wrote in message
... "Big Al" wrote snip It wouldn't be possible to edit an icon in a system file due to permissions. What one can do is to make an icon and then assign that to a shortcut. In addition to Greenfish, there's IcoFX that I use. I don't know whether it's still free. IcoFX can also make a multi-image ICO file. I like to take an image and then paste that into an icon editor and work from there. It's much easier to start with something like a reduced-size face than to draw a face using one pixel at a time. Icofx last freeware version 1.6.4 - http://www.321download.com/LastFreew...e40.html#IcoFX Regards wasbit |
#16
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
"wasbit" wrote
| Icofx last freeware version 1.6.4 | - http://www.321download.com/LastFreew...e40.html#IcoFX | Ah. Nice to know some things don't change every year. That's the same version I have. |
#17
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
"Paul in Houston TX" wrote
| Resource Hacker, system32.dll, icon group 200, the biggest one | is 48x48, Ordinal name 2317 and 2320. So now you know the names. | Go up to Icon and open 2317 or 2320 and save as icon. | I used to replace them on XP. Have not tried on 7 or 10. | For anyone who's interested, I wrote a VBScript some years ago to extract icons: https://www.jsware.net/jsware/scrfiles.php5#iconextr It's fairly basic. You can extract a single icon or compound ones. The download has a help file that explains it. The extraction doesn't use system APIs or anything similar. Rather, it directly reads the file bytes to find the resource section, then copies out the relevant bytes, then reconstitutes the icons based on the data found there. The icons are stored as bitmaps and lack only a small file header to get the full ICO file. The script checks the size and then adds in the appropriate header. You can just drop something like shell32.dll onto the script (if you have permission for drag/drop) and it will recreate all the icons in a few seconds. No system file permissions are needed and there's no risk because the script only reads the file bytes, without attempting to edit the file or call functions in the file. |
#18
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
A couple of notes I should mention about the icon extractor:
1) Look at the .html help file. A minor edit to choose extraction path is required before use. 2) I haven't tried the extractor with 64-bit files. It can work fine, but offhand I'm not sure whether it would need to be adapted to deal with 64-bit pointers. It depends on what changes Microsoft may have made (or not) to the 64-bit file header. A PE file header (EXE, DLL, OCX) is very complex and parsing it requires walking various series of pointers: Read bytes at offset x to find the offset y, which will be the start of a 4-byte pointer that indicates the offset of the beginning of the bytes that make up the resource table.... and so on. The icon extractor was written to deal with the 1-, 2- and 4-byte numeric values stored in a Win32 PE header. There's no reason to add 8-byte numeric values, but MS could have done that as part of the Win64 redesign. If they did then the extractor might need to be edited to produce a 64-bit version. |
#19
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:57:24 +0100, wasbit wrote:
Icofx last freeware version 1.6.4 - http://www.321download.com/LastFreew...e40.html#IcoFX Hi wasbit, Thanks for that purposefully helpful suggestion for others. o You have to get the right (old) version, as you noted. So that everyone always benefits, I dug up my notes on icofx: o Everything below is from my old notes in my software archives. === Dropbox link to an old freeware version of IcoFX. https://www.dropbox.com/s/g6ge41cpulnqzps/icofx_164_setup.exe?dl=0 Name: icofx_164_last_freeware_setup.exe Size: 1541684 bytes (1505 KiB) SHA256: 19B79CAE2FAC4372DCE4DCC6FB001B97A30ADF68835303DA28 336734267AA5FA http://www.portablefreeware.com/foru...ic.php?p=40061 which implies this is the last known freeware available and that the original author says he's OK with it being available. Most on that page seem to say the MD5 hash of 1.6.4.0 is MD5 069E5551B7DEEE6F37833E8930E66A34 17.11.2008 21:15 Which is said to be here http://www.321download.com/LastFreew...e40.html#IcoFX === Also... http://www.lupopensuite.com/db/icofx.htm certutil -hashfile IcoFX.exe MD5 MD5 hash of IcoFX.exe: 14aeada479ae59ef3248c9f8c2befbf0 CertUtil: -hashfile command completed successfully. === -- On Usenet, the purposefully helpful people add value to the thread. |
#20
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How do you edit an icon in one of the Windows system DLLs?
On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 08:11:40 -0400, Mayayana wrote:
That's the same version I have. So that others benefit from our actions, where we always keep in mind that the high cost of freeware can be lowered when others provide their advice, here is my ad hoc log file, from long ago, when I tested icoFX trialware. IcoFX version 3.2.1 (30-day trialware) https://www.icofx.ro/downloads.html === https://www.icofx.ro/files/icofxsetup.exe Check custom installation C:\Program Files (x86)\icofx3 Associate IcoFX with the ico/cur file extension === It wants to go into C:\Program Files (x86)\icofx3 I put it instead into C:\app\editor\icon\icofx === https://icofx.ro/tutorials3/index.html https://icofx.ro/tutorials3/tut5.html === 000 I installed https://www.icofx.ro/files/icofxsetup.exe 30-day trialware 001 I downloaded https://i.imgur.com/sk2SYH6.png 002 I saved as C:\Users\user\Desktop\sk2SYH6.png 003 I started IcoFX version 3.2.1 30-day trialware 004 IcoFX:File, Open, C:\Users\user\Desktop\sk2SyH6.png Create a Windows icon from the image 005 IcoFX:File, Save, C:\Users\user\Desktop\gitfolder.ico 006 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Add, C:\Users\user\Desktop\gitfolder.ico 007 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Save, C:\Users\user\Desktop\myicon.icl 008 IcoFX:Tools, File, Exit I was able to set the icon of a shortcut to that one icon. Shortcut: Properties, Change Icon, %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\gitfolder.ico, (select the one icon), OK, OK Notice I used the "ico" and not the "icl", which only works because you can put a single icon into an ico file (apparently) but if you want more icons than just one, you need to put them into an "icl" icon library. To add a second & third icon to an "ICO" library, I picked these files https://www.tenforums.com/geek/gars/...sic_folder.png https://winaero.com/blog/wp-content/.../01/before.png I saved "thumb_usic_folder.png" as C:\Users\user\Desktop\music.png I saved "before.png" as C:\Users\user\Desktop\lock.png Back in IcoFX, I added those two icons to the myicon.icl library. 001 I started IcoFX version 3.2.1 30-day trialware 002 IcoFX:File, Open, C:\Users\user\Desktop\music.png Create a Windows icon from the image 003 IcoFX:File, Save, C:\Users\user\Desktop\music.ico 004 IcoFX:File, Open, C:\Users\user\Desktop\lock.png Create a Windows icon from the image 005 IcoFX:File, Save, C:\Users\user\Desktop\lock.ico 006 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Open, C:\Users\user\Desktop\myicon.icl 007 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Add, C:\Users\user\Desktop\music.ico 008 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Add, C:\Users\user\Desktop\lock.ico 009 IcoFX:Tools, Icon Resource Editor, Save, C:\Users\user\Desktop\myicon.icl 010 IcoFX:Tools, File, Exit I was able to set the icon of a shortcut to one of those three icons. Shortcut: Properties, Change Icon, %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\myicon.icl (select any of the three icons), OK, OK === If you need icons, you can mine any of these native Windows files: C:\windows\system32\shell32.dll (default icon location) C:\windows\system32\imageres.dll (folders, devices, actions) C:\windows\system32\ddores.dll (hardware devices and resources) C:\windows\system32\pifmgr.dll (old-style icons of Windows 95 vintage) C:\windows\system32\inetcpl.cpl (old-style icons of Windows 95 vintage) C:\windows\system32\moricons.dll (old-style icons of Windows 95 vintage) C:\windows\system32\mmcndmgr.dll (old-style computer management icons) C:\windows\system32\accessibilitycpl.dll (accessibility features icons) C:\windows\system32\mmres.dll (audio speakers, headphones, microphones) C:\windows\system32\netcenter.dll (network settings and features) C:\windows\system32\netshell.dll (network connections & hardware) C:\windows\system32\networkexplorer.dll (network connections & hardware) C:\windows\system32\twinui.dll (twin screens icons) C:\windows\explorer.exe (file explorer icons) C:\windows\system32\gameux.dll (gaming icons) C:\windows\system32\mspaint.exe (paint-related icons) -- The high cost of freeware is mainly in finding & installing only the best. |
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