White Sysytem Icons? can they be changed?

Does anyone know how to change the white system icons (down by the clock) to something else very plain having them white

 

Replacing them with a colored system tray icons set?

cheers ...

 

I sure would like for the wireless one to show colored bars instead of the STUPID white on grey motif. What idiot thought that was a good design?

Gary

 

battery - batmeter.dll
sound - sndvolsso.dll
network - pnidui.dll

 

Hmmmm, ok who knows of a decent resource editor so I can try to patch the Icons the network dll uses? I haven't messed with this sort of thing since Windows 98.

Gary

 

reshacker.

 

Nice.

:yes:

 

Ok, I used that and found the icons in pnidui.dll. But there are 158 icons that I need to edit. (Well I wouldn't need to edit ALL of them but it is not obvious which of the 158 i would have to actually edit.) But I am curious if there is a resource editor that would let me DIRECTLY edit the icons. The one above would require I save all 158 icons, edit them and then install them. A time consuming process. I seem to remember having an old resource editor that could edit them in place in the DLL.

Gary

 

good luck keep us posted!!

These suck color would ROCK!!

 

Well it is do-able. I looked at the three dll files mentioned above and the icons are all readily accessible. There are HUNDREDS of icons in the network one, for example. The trick is to look at the icon GROUPS which then point to the individual icons. What is not clear is which VERSION of each icon would need to be edited. I believe it is ONLY the 32x32 16.8 million color versions. If I was sure of that, it would cut down dramatically the number of edits necessary.

The other odd thing is when I look at batmeter.dll, it has bit maps not icons. But bitmaps 301 and 306 can't be displayed. I get an access violation.

The other issue will be making sure both the active dll and the cached one Win7 uses for "protection" are both modified.

I will try to play with this over the weekend is someone else doesn't beat me to the punch. (If anyone feels so inclined go ahead and give it a try and let me know. We can compare notes as we go.)

Gary

 

i think your the 1st to have a solution as everywhere ive looked noone can figure out which is which

 

I played with it a bit more and the using ResHacker you extract the ICONGROUPS not individual ICONS. These ICONGROUPS result in ICO files with all the various resolutions of the icons in one file. That makes the task a LOT easier. But the only Icon editor I have at the moment is the one in Visual Studio 2008 and it could only edit some of the resolutions. That was odd. But I'll dig around and see if I can find another editor that can change ALL of them. Then I can use ResHacker to replace the ICONGROUPS with my new ones.

The last step will be to figure out if all the protections buil into Win7 will let me replace a system32 DLL. I suspect that may be a battle of wits.

Gary

 

Volume = %windir%\system32\SndVolSSO.dll
Network = %windir%\system32\pnidui.dll
Action Center = %windir%\system32\ActionCenter.dll
battery - batmeter.dll

 

I believe Action center already uses color to indicate needed attention. The other three files were already listed earlier. I am going to tackle the network one and post my findings. After that, if someone else wants to tackle the others, the way will be known.

Gary

 

You want it like vista? I can do the sound and battery for ya.. the network is tricky since its, as you a ****ton of icons that needs to be changed and its all very confusing

 

I am working on the network one right now.

Once we have the DLL's changed what issues do we have with replacing them back into System32 and WHERE are they cached so we can update the cache as well.

Gary

 

hmm i have changed a ton of .dlls in there.. i just took ownership, renamed and placed new.. cache never bothered me (*** yeah security microsoft)

 

Take ownership of the files in System32 and replace them with the ones in the download below. Then you'll have Vista'ish volume and battery icons. Gary will make the network icon i suppose.

http://localhostr.com/files/a7734a/icncs.rar

Win7 32-bit RTM only but i actually dont think it matters much.. not certain though

 

im x64 great work though hopefully some x64 icons come

 

give me the two dll's from your system32 and i'll make it, its no big deal at all..

you can also get reshacker yourself and place the very images yourself.. peach and cake

 

where do i find that? im not familiar with any of this and im also not familiar with taking ownership i used a prog to find them b4 but cant recall the folder

 

system32..

 

Hey folks notice anything different in the attachment?

I figured out what to change but have only changed one state of it as a test. I'll do the rest latter tonight and have something for you in the morning.

Reb!, did you change ALL of the phases of each icon/bmp? With the volume for example there are three or four different icons, each representing a different volume state. Same for the battery one.

Gary

 

Lets talk colors! I was thinking with all four bars active having the green color shown above. Same for three bars. At two bars the color would be yellow and at just one bar red.

Thoughts?

Gary

 

alright i got all 3 of mine there attached 1 by 1 cause they were too big u guys rock !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

another 1 u guys rock!!

 

sorry the pnidui file exceeds upload limit i can email to whoever can help? PM ME your email or maybe i can try to upload in a pm?

 

sweet are u x32 or x64? looks like i need to find a few more for each state.....im in your hands guys wish i could help LOL

 

ScuderiaConchiglia

Sure, if that's what you want.. Im personally using these (gnome) icons:

so im not gonna use these vista-ish ones.

I was just thinking more in the vista-green-ish way, but it's completely up to you.

Here's the x64 version, Nick.
http://localhostr.com/files/954858/x64.rar

Look up on "how to take ownership of files in windows 7" and then replace the files. (Well you take ownership, then rename the original and put in these custom ones)

Good luck

ps feel free to +rep me lol, i hate asking for that tho.

Hehe yes, certainly.. Anything else would be idiotic.

 

great thnx umm quick question do i just cut and paste these over the old?

 

1. Get http://localhostr.com/files/72c5dd/TakeOwn.zip
2. Add Takeown+.reg to your registry.
3. Goto C:\Windows\System32
4. Find SndVolSSO.dll
5. Shift + Rightclick it and click take ownership.
6. Rename to anything.
7. Paste in the new file in x64.rar.
8. Do they same for batmeter.dll
9. Reboot
10. Great Justice

 

sweet they worked now since this is basic wonder what else can be changed i liked your grey and blue volume better then what u gave me...also maybe making the color in the battery bar brighter

 

Heehee, i've done enough havent i ?

I suggest you get some sort of picture editing software (photoshop) and reshacker then do trial and error, like i did Then you can have anything you want..

 

will give it a shot

 

I'll post a tutorial sometime on Saturday.

Gary

 

i downloaded it will try and figure it out but still looking forward to your multi colored wifi icon....

UPDATE:
Well gave it a try and will continue to with reshacker but not much success so still in need of help...thnx for all so far too!!!

 

yea i looked last night for icons no luck and i tried reshacker with no luck gonna need help if anyone is willing

 

How do you have MSN as an icon in the tray?

 

close windowslive then find the program in programs right click the windwoslive file go to security set to vista save and restart bam

 

Here are my notes on how to edit the puidui.dll to get color icons for the wireless.

1. Copy c:\windows\system32\puidui.dll to a working directory.

2. In the working directory, use reshacker to extract the icongroups 3022 - 3026 and 3092 - 3096. Just open reshacker then open the working copy of puidui.dll. On the left expand the icongroups. Drill down to the ones specified above and export them. They will be saved as .ICO files.

3. Use IcoFx to edit each icongroup. There are 12 icons in each set. I am not able to tell WHICH of the 12 formats we really need to change, so I changed them all. Some of the formats show a palette of colors you can select from. The ones that don't can still have colors assigned by using the RGB sliders at the bottom of the color picker tool. When saving you may get a "Palette does not include the color black" four times. Ignore it. I did without any issues latter.

4. In the working directory, use reshacker to replace the icongroups 3022-30236 and 3092-3096 in pnidui.dll. You do this pretty much the same way as you did the export. It should be obvious. Be sure you put the right ICO back into the right ICONGROUP, though. I did notice that the reshacker interface showed some strange background colors behind some of the edited icons in the icongroups. But I rechecked them and they are fine. Seems to be just a display anomaly.

5. Right click on c:\Windows\system32\pnidui.dll and select properties. Select the "security" tab and click on advanced. Click on the "Owner" tab. Then click "Edit". Select Administrators. Click Apply. (You will get a dialog box. Click Ok.) Click OK again. Close properties and then open them again. Now change the Administrator's permissions to Full control.

6. Rename the pnidui.dll file to pnidui_old.dll (or something similar) then copy your edited pnidui.dll from the working directory to C:\windows\system32 and reboot. Note you will NOT be able to delete the pnidui.dll file from the system32 directory. You can rename it, but not delete it. I found this out when I tried to put an updated version with the multiple color icons after my initial trial. I thought I'd already made a backup copy of the original, so I'd just delete my trial one. Nope, Win7 would not allow that. Makes sense though. So I renamed it again added my new version, rebooted and then deleted my second copy.

That's it. I will enclose my edited pnidui.dll file in a zip format. If anyone wants to use it. It has red for one bar, yellow for two or three bars, and green for four or five bars. http://localhostr.com/files/537b95/pnidui.zip [ Note the pnidui.zip file contains only the 32 bit version of the DLL! Sorry, 64 bit users are left to your own devices!]

Gary

 

You mean the Compatability tab.

 

oops yup!!

 

ScuderiaConchiglia, thnx for all your help doubt i can get this done on my own but will try your file didnt work on my x64 machine made my wifi icon disappear

 

Sorry I should have noted that. I just updated the message to indicate that.

You can easily do this on your own. There is no rocket science involved. ...big ol' grin...

Gary

 

big ol' grin back i checked it out guess im just dumb or missing something LOL trust me i want to figure this out so i can do all my icons and the colors i want

 

ok so still no luck i changed all the icons have them saved on my desktop but no clue how to get them all back in? i tried and it only lets me put 1 in??

 

I just used lanlights for the network one. Works great on Win Ultimate x64. Google it as there are a couple of other programs for 64 bit network indicators.

 

not looking for extra program when it can be done by manual changes

 

No problem. LOL.

 

What only lets you put 1 in? You need to be more specific as to what you are doing. Did you follow my instructions?

Gary