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How to: change the start button text on Windows XP

3 September 2008 13,964 views 26 Comments



Haven’t posted many Windows XP tricks recently, so here’s one: How to change the start button on your Windows XP.

Tired of the boring old “start” button at the bottom left corner of your Windows XP’s monitor? Want something new to replace iit? Well here’s how to change it.

With a few modifications in the Windows Registry, you can replace the “start” text with anything you like. Great for achieving a new, custom look for your Windows XP. So let’s get started.

Warning: this tutorial is more for advanced users, and I'm not
responsible if your system gets messed up. Only attempt the following
at your own risk.

Step 1: Modify explorer.exe

If the warning didn’t scare you enough, then the title of this step probably did. Yes, we are going to change Explorer, the backbone of your Windows XP, but don’t worry. Everything should be safe as long as you follow the steps closely.

As explorer is a binary file, we need a special tool to modify it. One of the best ones for this purpose is Resource Hacker. There are of course others that will get the trick done, but we will be using RH this tutorial so I recommend installing it to avoid making mistakes. Install it and let’s continue.

As always before changing anything. you want to back up. So open My Computer and navigate to   and look for explorer. Copy paste it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Now that you’ve backed it up, fire up Resource Hacker and find the same explorer.exe.

When you’ve found and opened explorer in RH, navigate to String Table -> 37 -> 1033. The “start” value is on line 4, after the 578. Change the text “start” to anything you want, making sure you keep the quotes. In this example. I changed the text to xptricks.net.

Press the Compile Script button to make Resource Hacker put together the code. Now click File and Save the script as explorer.exe. into C: \WINDOWS\inf or another C: \WINDOWS subfolder.

Note: make sure you choose Save AS, NOT just save!!

And that’s all for the first step! Now let’s move onto the second one -modifying the registry.

Step 2: changing the registry.

By now, you have a modified explorer sitting in the /inf/ subfolder, so we need to tell Windows to use that one, instead of the original one still resting untouched.

To do this, we need to make just one simple registry modification. To open up the registry, press start (something else soon ;) ) -> run and type regedit.

In the registry editor window that opens, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon and look for the registry entry “shell”. Click it.

Change the explorer.exe to inf/explorer.exe or whereever you saved the modified explorer.

And believe it or not, you’re done! All you have to do now is reboot or log out and bacö in to see the changes. Enjoy your new custom Windows XP start button!

More Cool Windows XP tips & tricks HERE!

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26 Comments »

  • CSS:Jockey said:

    Nice tip, thanks for sharing.

    # 5 September 2008 at 8:22 am
  • anirban roy said:

    great info. thanks.
    by the way i hav used tuneup utilities before & with it we can change the booting screen at start up & the shut down screen. & it looks quite cool.

    anirban roy’s last blog post..publish your documents online for free

    # 13 September 2008 at 5:34 pm
  • techniqueal t. said:

    cool xp tip! easy to follow too! thanks for sharing ^_^

    techniqueal t.’s last blog post..Image Mapping and Online Image Map Editors

    # 15 September 2008 at 1:38 pm
  • Imprinted items said:

    Awesome trick. While using this trick it will cause any issues with the registry or .Exe file

    # 3 October 2008 at 7:37 am
  • ACA said:

    i fucked myne system because of that,i do something wrong,i reinstall and try again,i do it ! its awsome
    p.s. i never quit :)

    # 6 October 2008 at 12:29 pm
  • Robindar said:

    Hi, thanks for sharing, its working fine properly.

    regards,

    Robindra

    # 30 October 2008 at 11:51 am
  • mojorisin said:

    Try to use the Windows search-function after that… ;)

    # 21 November 2008 at 9:14 pm
  • Tommy said:

    I think it isn’t a good idea to try any of this, but its kind of interesting to know how to.

    # 29 November 2008 at 7:26 pm
  • Tommy said:

    I would like to know how to change the start button color.

    # 29 November 2008 at 7:27 pm
  • George The Computer Technician said:

    My question is: why would someone change the text on the button? There was an old joke about Windows: one has to press “Start” in order to quit the Windows, so I guess for some people “EXIT” might read better than “START” (just as a joke perhaps).

    @Tommy: Colour cannot be changed just for this button. It can be changed for the current Windows Scheme – this means that all button of the Start button colour will be changed.

    # 15 December 2008 at 7:28 pm
  • Rummy said:

    Why would someone want to change it? Because it’s funny and fairly unique if you ask me!

    # 16 December 2008 at 3:10 pm
  • Nelson said:

    Very interesting. I wonder how many people will screw up their computers doing this. I will definitely try it though, and then boast with my friends.. jaja

    thanks for the tip.

    # 21 December 2008 at 4:20 am
  • khaled@ Number Plate Registration said:

    That’s pretty cool cheers for the tutorial. Is there any way of changing the tag that pops up when you roll over the button as well, to coincide with the new text “click here to begin”.

    # 2 February 2009 at 6:39 pm
  • id.armaya said:

    sweeeet bro
    thanks

    # 15 February 2009 at 11:34 pm
  • Arafat Hossain Piyada said:

    I don’t know why people forget to give credit to original writer. You taken this article from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Secret-Way-To-Rename-The-Start-Button-44939.shtml and forget to mention the source. You are using Adsense and you should know Adsense is very strict on content theft. If authority report it then you may lost your Adsense account. So it’s better idea to add a source link on post footer if you really want to show you as a good blogger.

    # 15 May 2009 at 5:18 am
  • cat man said:

    I ALMOST messed up my system (not blaming you)
    Luckily my dad has a friend that fixes computers :)

    # 23 May 2009 at 9:40 pm
  • Eerik said:

    cat man:

    DO be careful when messing with the registry!

    # 23 May 2009 at 10:01 pm
  • Tssguy123 said:

    Khaled, I know there is probably a very small chance that you will read this, but I found out how to change the rollover text..

    Go ahead and go into Reshacker, and open explorer.exe..

    Press view and then “Find Text”.
    Type in “Click here to begin”.. Edit that and compile/save it.. Then just follow the tutorial from there. You save it the same way and stuff.

    # 30 May 2009 at 4:09 am
  • dwwssfbkmz said:

    Au2lgQ ngvrftezeksj, [url=http://czcfxoylojbm.com/]czcfxoylojbm[/url], [link=http://ommbiixasery.com/]ommbiixasery[/link], http://wfradwltisru.com/

    # 19 June 2009 at 3:00 am
  • Joseph Bailey said:

    go to folder 48(i think), look for the line that says “click here to begin.” change that to what ever, then compile the script, then save.

    # 26 June 2009 at 4:57 am
  • Joseph Bailey said:

    it waz folder 34

    # 29 June 2009 at 10:23 am
  • abhimanyu said:

    where do i find resource hacker in my computer

    # 4 July 2009 at 1:19 pm
  • Joseph knight said:

    when i use reshack and click on string table, it only shows the 4000 numbers, not 37. I can’t find it anywhere.

    # 16 July 2009 at 9:46 pm
  • Web Solutions said:

    i found it very enlightening.
    Smart and cool tricks
    nice work keep it up…

    # 17 July 2009 at 10:27 am
  • Devinder said:

    Nice trick Bro this works…………..
    Thanx Bro

    # 9 August 2009 at 7:56 pm
  • zie said:

    nice…………
    i want try it to my boss PC……..
    ha7…………

    # 31 August 2009 at 10:33 pm

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