I still prefer to run Windows 2000 server on some of my machines. It’s missing some of the bells and whistles, but over time I’ve found it to be more stable and better performing than Windows XP. My only real complaint about Windows 2000 is that the user interface is a bit drab. With a little work though you can tweak the interface to your own personal linking. Here’s some of the tools and methods I’ve come across to make this OS look the way you want it to look.
Resource Hacker
Resource Hacker lets you customize almost every aspect of the Windows OS interface from all the boot screens, dialog boxes, start menu, and system icons. It’s a freeware program and you can download it here: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
To customize Windows 2000 you first need to find the correct system files to edit. The most important ones are these:
Found in c:\WINNT\
explorer.exe
Found in c:\WINNT\system32\
MSGINA.dll
ntoskrnl.exe
shell32.dll
USER32.dll
Resource Hacker takes a little getting used to, but it’s basically straight forward. Just make sure you backup all of these files before messing with them. Also, once you edit any of these files Windows won’t let you save them in the original file folder while it’s up and running. There’s a few ways around this, but the simplest is just to boot up into DOS (or a program like ERD Commander) and copy the files over there. Here is some of the interfaces that are contained in each file:
- explorer.exe contains the string variable for the text on the start button.
- USER32.dll contains the icon for the start button.
- ntoskrnl.exe contains the Windows 2000 boot logo image in the bitmap section.
- MSGINA.dll contains a lot of the dialog boxes interfaces like login and shut down as well as the text strings that are used in them.
- shell32.dll contains all the system icons including the ones used in the start menu.
Microangelo
I had some problems trying to replace the icons in shell32.dll in Resource Hacker. I recommend just opening shell32.dll in an icon editor like Microangelo and doing it directly there.
You can get Microangelo here: http://www.microangelo.us/
Changing the Logon Background Color
A. Start Regedit B. Go to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors\Background C. Change the three numbers from the default of 58 110 165 to the RGB values you want D. For example 110 110 255 is a fairly light blue, 0 0 0 would be black E. Log off and log back on again to see the change.
There are also several other variables in this folder that you can play with the RGB values of to change different aspects of the bootup and shutdown screens.
Customize Internet Explorer
And if you’re tired of seeing “- Microsoft Internet Explorer” after the title of every web page then here’s how to change it to something else:
Find the following key in the registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
Then find the entry “Window Title” (if it is not there, then create it) and change the text to whatever you like.