Replacing the Windows XP Start Button Background - Preparing your system.
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I know you’re anxious to jump ahead, right? After reading my last article, you’re pretty confident with Resource Hacker and you’re ready to go, but if you try to edit your new graphic into luna.msstyles at this point you’re going to have some issues.
There are two major stepping stones. The first is Windows File Protection, which we’ve already encountered, and the second is Windows theme protection. Windows themes have a built in check that determines whether or not the theme was digitally signed by Microsoft.
This protection is managed by the uxtheme.dll file in your System32 folder. This is a binary file and we won’t be able to use Resource Hacker to edit it. You’ll need a hex editor. For sake of brevity, I’m not going to go into detail about using a hex editor. If you’ve done it before, the settings are provided below.
For those not comfortable with a hex editor, you can use the UX Multi-Patcher to do the trick. It works on Windows XP, XP SP1, XP SP2, and Server 2003. I’ve linked the file locally since the original site doesn’t appear to be up anymore.
The Multi-patcher is simple to use. Just open the zip file and run the executable. It gives you a brief description of what it does. Just follow the on-screen instructions.
The multi-patcher will also uninstall the patch if you run it a second time.
If you run the multi-patcher program you can skip the next section of this article. For those who prefer to take a more hands-on approach, I’m going to show you how to patch the system manually with a hex editor.
Next: Patching Uxtheme.dll >>
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