What is a good free program for editing user.exe
and how do you change the name and colour
of where the text on the left side of the start
menu where the text of windows 98 is.

You could try opening it in reshacker. That may help you a bit.

Wrong file.

It's in explorer.exe

bitmap 157

I've changed mine to say "Windows 98 Second Edition"

thanks about explorer but i still need to be able to edit the files explorer.exe and user.exe

As said b4... try reshacker...

reshacker comes up with an error when i try to edit user.exe

Wrong file again!

USER.EXE is an NE file and is part of the 16-bit subsystem. Reshacker only works with PEs.

What you're probably thinking of is USER32.DLL which has nothing other than Version resources.

All these files are locked while Windows is running, so save to another directory, boot into DOS, copy the files over, then start Windows.

thats not quite what i mean because i still want to edit user.exe to change the start menu icon because the program i used to edit user.exe wasnt free.
also when i use resource hacker to edit explorer.exe when i go into bitmap, 157, 1033 and try and choose replace resource the computer hangs

Download this: http://www.dr-hoiby.com/TrayIconIn256Color...2.3110.1.us.zip

And this: http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip

Then modify your heart out, then boot to dos and type: COPY C:\FOLDER\EXPLORER.EXE C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE

NOW HIT ENTER



FOLDER is the "folder" you put your modified explorer in like: C:\ABC

keep the name short and in root C: or you will be doing one of these ~



TADA !!!

eXescope allows for editing 16 bits modules (user.exe etc...).

I've never had any problem for replacing bitmaps with Reshacker.

@eidenk
I am using Windows 98se and my system hangs on replacing bitmaps
with either ResourceHacker or Exescope what could be the reason?

I haven't got a clue. You've got no problems with other programs, doing other things ?

Or maybe it's just that the new bitmaps are not of the same color depth than the originals.

But even doing that I can't remember I ever had such a problem.

I did try to replace 16 color ones with 256 color ones in some files but it did not crash when doing it.

Try Borland Resource Workshop 4.5

Discontinued software. Filename is BRW45.ZIP

found XN Resource Editor works for 32 bit files like explorer.exe and doesnt freeze but it doesnt work on 16 bit files like user.exe
http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d10resourceeditor.htm

does it matter if i change a bitmap so that it has a different amount of colours and is a different height?

Trying is knowing.

I've used Icon Forge to edir the icon on the Start button. It's not that good though, because you can't copy and paste a new icon into the icon you are currently working on. You have to have a bit of an artistic skill for Icon Forge.

For editing the text on the Start button, I've used Resource Hacker. It's pretty easy. You can also change the start menu bitmap by replacing it with pretty much anything you want...it doesn't have to be the same size or color depth. At one point, I even put my own picture in there!

Hex + resource editors [all free(ware)]:
http://www.mdgx.com/toy.htm#HEX

Hope this helps.

so somebody playing a game with windows system files? fun things to do? YES
anyway for win98SE user you can download Win98Revolution by Tihiy
http://tihiy.ahanix.org

and for those who insterest in win2k please check this :
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=70094
thats what i'm doing now

I tried to replace the icon of "Shut Down ..." in Start Menu of Win98SE, by using Resource Hacker and replacing Icon Group 28 with something else in SHELL32.DLL. But it does not work, the old icon stays, even after deleting ShellIconCache. What have I done wrong??

You don't need to reshack to change the start menu icons. Editing the registry is enough. Shutdown is 27 not 28 BTW. 28 is shared overlay.


Desktop Architect (freeware) for example allows you to change those icons without editing the registry by hand.

http://www.brothersoft.com/Desktop_Archite...load_12104.html

Thanks a lot eidenk for the hint to the nice tool "Desktop Architect".
I need to clarify the icon numbering system though. You are right that shut down icon is 27 in the registry, cause it starts with 0. Whereas I am also not wrong, in Resource Hacker the Icon Group starts with 1, so the shutdown is Icon Group 28, Shared Overlay is Ico Group 29.

The reason for using Resource Hacker is that I want to change the shut down icon with those from XP. I am still puzzled, when I start the Desktop Architect, it already shows that XP shut down icon is indeed in the SHELL32.DLL, but the Start Menu shut down icon was still the Win98 one. Then I switch it to something else, switch back to shut down icon in DA, click "Apply", then suddenly the Start Menu shut down icon changed to the XP style. Even after I uninstalled DA, delete all the contents of "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons", reboot, the Start Menu shut down icon stays the XP style!! Weird... I don't know why. It must have been cached somewhere...

Iv'e been using eXescope now on 16 bit exe's & dll's for 2 years, it
works pretty well on 98se, it never has locked up on me like
reshack does , although this new install of 98se i'm currently on seems
to work ok now with reshack, but it has a lot less installed on it.