Change Text on XP Start Button - Version I
For Windows XP Home and Professional Versions
Very Important - See notes at end of article
before using this procedure !
Contains SP2 and Ad-aware Cautions
| January 3, 2008 - This is the
original "Change Text on XP Start Button" page published
back in 2002. There are some issues with this procedure
that have been addressed and corrected in a new tutorial
that is located at "Change
Text on XP Start Button - Version II". I've left
this page intact as a reference, but if you are going to
make the changes, use the "Change
Text on XP Start Button - Version II" and not the
procedure listed below. |
--- The original article starts here - Read the January 3,
2008 note above before proceeding. ---
|
Note: A number of users
have written to say that when the text on the Start
Button is changed, the Search function from the Start
Button (right click) context menu ceases to function.
That's true, it does, and if I ever used that particular
function I'd have been aware of the problem. I don't use
it, so I wasn't aware, but now you've been warned. As
far as I know there are no other caveats associated with
the modification. |
I’ve read a number of articles on the internet about changing the
text on the Start button in XP. On more than one occasion I’ve seen
references to a five (5) letter limitation when the button is
renamed. I always wondered if this was true or just an assumption
someone made because the default ‘start’ just happened to fit the
button size. So, I decided to run a test and see if there really was
a five character limit.
As you can see from the screen capture above it would seem that the
five character limit isn’t etched in stone. The button expanded to
accept the text I entered with no problem. I’ve been using the
system for a few weeks now with no adverse effects. That’s not to
say I won’t discover something down the road a bit, but for now I
feel comfortable with the changes. If you’d like to try the
procedure I used, the instructions follow.
Step 1 – Modify Explorer.exe
File
In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at
C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file
it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have
used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM
is a freeware
utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources
in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It
incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and
works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating
systems. Navigate
here to download Resource Hacker.
The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe
located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on
your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and
open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe as shown in
Fig. 01.
Fig. 01
The category we are going to be using is String Table. Expand it by
clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37
followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout
rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will
display the stringtable as shown in Fig. 02. We’re going to modify
item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on
the current Start button.
Fig. 02
There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so
that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part
of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new
text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry. In my case
I used ElderGeek as shown in Fig. 03.
Fig. 03
Compare the screen captures in Fig. 02 and Fig. 03 and you’ll notice
that after the new text string has been entered the Compile Script
button that was grayed out in Fig. 02 is now active in Fig. 03. I
won’t get into what’s involved in compiling a script, but suffice it
to say it’s going to make this exercise worthwhile. Click Compile
Script and then save the altered file using the Save As command on
the File Menu. Do not use the Save command – Make sure to use the
Save As command and choose a name for the file. See Fig. 04. Save
the newly named file to C:\Windows.
Fig. 04
Step
2 – Modify the Registry
Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary
to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user
logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry
I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a
temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run
and type regedit in the Open: field. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon
Fig. 05
In the right pane (Fig. 05), double click the Shell entry to open
the Edit String dialog box as shown in Fig. 06. In Value data: line,
enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file.
Click OK.
Fig. 06
Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back
in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all
went as planned you should see your new Start button with the
revised text.
|
Here's an interesting note I received
from Daniel B. regarding an experience he had with this
procedure. I haven't verified this personally nor have I
experienced the situation when running AdAware, but it's
worth adding it here as a caution. Thank you, Daniel,
for sending it along.
Good evening, I would like to mention that your site
helps me a lot in understanding Windows XP and
suggest you add a few lines to your article titled:
Change Text on XP Start Button
For Windows XP Home and Professional Versions
I
have executed the procedure to modify the text on
the XP start button and it works fine. I did that a
week ago.
Today I downloaded Lavasoft’s Ad-aware freeware and
ran it.
Being curious by nature I looked at the scanned
results before suppressing anything.
I
was surprised to find that the shell modification
used to change text on xp start button was picked up
by ad-aware.
I
did not delete it!
I can only image what it would have done to windows
if it had been removed.
So I suggest a warning be added to your article to
the effect that shell modifications and ad-aware
could lead to …. Windows not starting.
Thank you
Daniel
B
Hello,
I
have found your site to be very informative and
helpful. However, there is one thing that I
believe needs mentioning. I had read before
that it was possible to change the text that is
displayed on your Start button. I followed your
instructions and soon enough, the ‘Start’ button on
my XP Pro SP1 said ‘stop’ instead (how clever,
right???). All was well until I decided to
download the network installer for MS’ new SP2.
I ran the installer with all virus scanning software
off and updated my machine to SP2. I did the
initial Automatic Updates setup and prepared to boot
into my desktop. It appeared to be working
except my desktop never fully loaded. I got this
message saying that Windows Explorer had encountered
a problem and needed to close. Blah, blah, blah, you
know the drill. So I restart. Same thing.
I thought I was in big trouble until I tried
ctrl-alt-del. Success! I was able to start a
new task (regedit), point my Shell back to
explorer.exe, and restart. Low and behold, after I
entered my password, my desktop came up and
everything was normal. SP2 has worked like a
charm ever since.
I
thought that maybe it was just something wrong with
the update to SP2 and later tried to modify my Shell
file again. I restarted and got the same
error. I think it would be a very good idea to post
an update to the text changing site telling users
that if they run the update to SP2 with the modified
Shell, their computer will become unusable.
It’s really too bad – I enjoyed the heck out of
telling Microsoft where to stick their ‘Start’
button…
Thanks for the great site and keep up the good
work!!!
Adam
Thanks,
Adam. The bottom line here is that you should
revert back to the original explorer.exe file
that was backed up in Step 1 of the article.
Failure to do so can result in serious
consequences.
A Note from Ion
I thought I'd have some fun and follow this
guide.
However I was far too lazy to do the reg
hack, and simply directly replaced the original
explorer.exe file with my modified one (after
backing up both of course).
By replace I mean rename the modified file to
/explorer.exe/ then rename the original file in
the windows folder to /explorer.exe.original
/(or similar). Next just copy and paste the
renamed modified file into the windows directory
and re-boot.
Doing it this way eliminates any AdAware
issues /and/ keeps the right click menu intact.
Thanks for the inspiration, I've move on to
changing the button colour now as well. Great
(and dangerous?) little tool Resource Hacker.
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