Changing WindowsXP Icons
 

How do you change icons like the Recycle Bin, the hard drive icons in My Computer, etc.

Display properties > desktop > customise desktop > select the icon you'd like to change and click change icon. Click browse, find the icon you'd like to replace it with.

You could have found this info on google though...;)

i never noticed that button before....... weird:weird:... thanks :)

[added] how do i change the other icons? like the "My Pictures" folder, the "My Music" folder, the "Help and Support," "Run," and "Search" icons in the start menu? those have no icons... thanks to StyleXP...:(

TweakUI

http://www.microsoft.com > Search

Thanks whiteflip, i found TweakUI.exe :) it has more stuff than i expected and microsoft recommends that i get it.

I love TweakUI. It's all the stuff that you should've been able to change from the start.

What Cognition said. ^

thats probably why they recommend you get it :)

Lol yah I'd have to agree on that one. TweakUI has saved me a ton of headache =)

I still have one issue with TweakUI that I can't seem to get rid of... my damn windows are still animated when I minimize/maximize/restore them, and every time I uncheck it, it always comes back. It's been doing this forever, and it's really annoying.

Hmm... I dont care enough to search the site. Can I be referred to TweakUI?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p.../powertoys.asp
just look on the side for TweakUI...

wtf? It says it's not a valid w32 app.

You runnin WinXPSP1?

me? yea.

[added] oh nevermind... [/added]

Try doing it the standard way. Go to Control Panel>System>Advanced tab. Under Performance click Settings. Then uncheck Animate Windows.

Did that. I also tried X-Setup, but neither that or TweakUI would do it, either. It doesn't matter how I do it, but everytime I turn my computer back on, the damn things are animated again.

I think you can change most of the stuff in tweak ui manually in the registry look at http://www.winguides.com/
or http://www.tweakxp.com/
You learn and it's more fun I think.

I'll go check those out soon. Thanks.

disable all your start up programs. one of them probably is resetting your settings back to the way you dont want them.

I cant Open TweakUI. What can I do? Is there a place I can download icon packs?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p.../powertoys.asp

That is where you should get TweakUI for WinXP. I'm betting you got the one from the first result on google, which is for Windows 2k and lower.

...so What exactly Does it do? Sorry If I sound like a n00b. I installed it.

Also, With these Icon packs, Do we have to manually replace the Icons we want?

I don't know why TweakUI is being suggested for changing the OS icons. AFAIK, the only icons it changes are the shortcut overlay and the IE throbber(which doesnt really count) unless i'm missing something.

IconPackager is one program that you can change the icons with, there may be others out there that can be found with a good Google search.

@sgtfuzzbubble99 want to get rid of the minimize/maximise effect? Right click on My Computer > properties > Advanced tab > Performance - settings button> visual effects

Rellik: I was wondering about the same thing..
unfortunatly(sp?) IconPackager isn't free..
:)

'tis true, there is a 30 day evaluation :(

Yeah, I know. That was the first thing I did. And every time rebooted afterwards, the checkbox was rechecked. Then I tried TweakUI... and it did the same thing. Then I tried X-Setup with the same result. I pretty much just gave up on it. If I disable the window animation effects, they'll stay disabled until I reboot, then they just come back.

What start up proggies you running? Is this like a service issue? Registry keys not being altered correctly? Or being altered at startup? So many questions so few answers. Sorry I can't help more on this. I had this problem a while back and reinstalling windows fixed it...

It won't do me any good to reinstall windows because this machine came preloaded with XP Home.

The startup programs include a couple apps that are related to my sound card, a QT app, the Sonic app that comes with Winamp, some HP share-to-web thing, and the usual Windows applications.

that sounds like my computer...

I formatted, and reinstalled Windows on my computer, and I found the drivers to make everything work again. :D

You need no special program to change the icons, as already suggested earlyer in the thread.
msconfig (start>run>Type: msconfig)is good to run once in a while, to remove the hidden progams that start when your comp stats eating your ram and cycles. And if you like to play with Fire there is always the run command regedit, which can do some cool and catastrophic things.

msconfig can do that!? i only use it to disable spyware loading :)

I'm trying to run msconfig but shows "file not found"... WTF is happening here?

Other thing, my regedit was disabled by the administrator... BUT IS ME AND SURE I DO NOT. Somebody knows what is this s...?

If you're not logging on with the Administrator account, then I doubt that msconfig will work. I might be wrong about that, though...

Most Windows icons can be changed manually. Desktop icons can be changed in the Customize Desktop in the Desktop tab found when you right-click on the desktop, as has already been pointed out. Most any file-type icon can be changed by going to Folder Options --> File Types in the Control Panel (I forget if this was mentioned in this thread already).

If you want a free program to change icons, you can get a copy of iPhile at this url:

http://www.virtualplastic.net/scrow/

The great part about iPhile is that it saves your scheme to a file that you can re-load if some program changes your icons, making it easy to get your scheme back in a few clicks.

Three places to get really good icons are:

http://www.foood.net/index.htm

http://www.marvilla.us/

http://interfacelift.com/icons-win/

Check out the attachment to see the icons I'm using for my computer.