A guide to ResHacker

[Advance]

Resource Hacker: Every customisers tool.

Get it here.

From site:

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.

DISCLAIMER: Anything that you do to your computer or yourself as a result of this guide is not my problem nor my fault.

Let me start off by saying, make backups. PLEASE. It is so simple and so easy. And so not worth the pain of reformat etc is you don't.

The Menu:

File

Open: Opens a File to Hack.

Save: Saves the new hacked file.

Please note: You can not over write all files you will hack. Use an other method (see below) for other ways to replace files.

Save As: Regular save as command.

Exit: Exits the program

Overview: Basic File Commands

Edit

Select All: Selects all text.

Cut: Cut text selection command.

Copy: Copy text selection command.

Paste: Inserts copied text.

Undo: Undos last move.

Overview: Basic Edit Commands.

View

Expand Tree: Expands the tree in the resource tree. Open the 'folder' to edit whats inside.

Collapse Tree: Does the opposite of the 'Expand Tree' Command.

Find Text: The regular find control. Also accessed by hitting F3. Extremley useful for use when searching 'String Tables.'

Find Next: Just like hitting F3 again.

Editor Font: Changed the font of the text.

Action

Save Resource as Binary / (decomposed) .Res File: You got three options here, I put them into one part. The way to save them as these types of files, are to go to the specific object you want, and save it from there.

Save all Resources: A good tool when you are editing bitmap after bitmap or icon after icon. Saves everything in the tree to where ever you specify seperatley.

Please note: Save this into a SEPERATE FOLDER. You save ALL THE RESOURCES. That means if there is 1,000 icons and bitmaps in shell32.dll, there will be 1,000 icons and bitmaps in where ever you saved it.

Replace (Icon, Bitmaps, Cursors, Other Resources): This is a bigie. Without this, you couldn't do nearly as much as you can now. You can change bitmaps and icons and just about anything else in the resources with this. See diagrams:

Note: Keep the language the same as the other resources when addinf or replacing resources.

Note Two: You will get a file preview box when replacing bitmaps and icons.

Add New Resource: Same as replacing, but adding. ;l

Delete Resource: Deletes the resource. When deleting, use Alt A, then D. The first time you will have to confirm, but you will be ok the next few.

Thats all for the menu.

Moving on.

The Tree

Opce you have a resource opened, notepad for example ( I will be using notepad because it is a very easy hack )

This is what I will refer to as the resource tree.

When nothing is expanded, you see object typed. In notepad speceficly, you will notice 8 seperators. In this file we will only be touching 6 of them: Icons, the Menu, Dialogs, String tables, and icon groups.

Everything above we can edit and change with ResHacker. I will use the program notepad, located in your c:/windows/ folder, do demonstrate how.

Icons: Those dumb ugly things that are called icons, are easy to delete, and easier to replace. To replace them, simply have an icon in mind saved on your hard drive, navigate to the icon in the resource tree, and replace it in the action menu.

I replaced mine with a blank icon, it looks very sexy.

Menus: Next we have the one and only menu in Notepad, so lets get to it. There is a very basic structure to Menus in ResHacker. I will outline it to you.

[b]#[/b] MENU
LANGUAGE [b]LANGUAGE, SUBLANGUAGE[/b]
{
POPUP "[b]MENU NAME[/b]"
{
	MENUITEM "[b]Submenu item text[/b]",  [b]#[/b]
}
}

That is the move basic form of a Menu, Ill go through all the parts.

[b]#[/b] MENU

What Menu Number is it, and that its a menu. Starts the menu.

LANGUAGE [b]LANGUAGE, SUBLANGUAGE[/b]

What languages will be used, there is no real reason to edit this.

{
POPUP "[b]MENU NAME[/b]"

The title of the menu: ie: File or Edit or View etc

	MENUITEM "[b]Submenu item text[/b]",  [b]#[/b]
}

The title of the command in the menu header.

Ie:New, Open, Save, etc

}

Ends the Menu

Dialogs

While notepad doesn't have the best example for dialogs, you can still use it to play with.

I suggest using Dialog 14 in Notepad, becasue it if very simple, and uses key components.

This is the most basic dialog.

[b]#[/b] DIALOG [b]#, #, ###, ###[/b]
STYLE [b]blah[/b]
CAPTION "[b]blah[/b]"
LANGUAGE [b]LANGUAGE, SUBLANGUAGE[/b]
FONT [b]#[/b], "[b]blah[/b]"
{
   CONTROL "[b]blah[/b]", [b]####[/b],[b]blah[/b], [b]#, #, ###, ###[/b]
}

There it is, lets disect it:

[b]#[/b] DIALOG [b]#, #, ###, ###[/b]

This is somewhat like the first line of a Menu: It gives a dialog #, it shows that it is a dialog, and also, it shows the dimensions. Drag / resize the main box of a diaglog, and watch those numbers change.

STYLE [b]blah[/b]

This is more advanced, it is all the styling for the dialog. I would pretty much leave it be, I might go more into these in later guides.

CAPTION "[b]blah[/b]"

This name, or title of the dialog.

Ie: Start -> Run: Run is the caption.

LANGUAGE [b]LANGUAGE, SUBLANGUAGE[/b]

Same as Menu.

FONT [b]#[/b], "[b]blah[/b]"

Gives the dialog a font, and a size.

{
   CONTROL "[b]blah[/b]", [b]####[/b],[b]blah[/b], [b]#, #, ###, ###[/b]
}

The controls. These are what is actually in the dialog. I could spends hours typing out all about this, but I will make it simple:

There are text controls, blank controls, and button controls. Most of them fit into these catagories. The text controls are easy, you just change the title of what you see, in essence, renaming them.

"Blank controls" are the items where you put in imput, You can move these around and resize them.

"Button Controls" are the buttons, you can rename them and move them and resize them. Those can give you some cool changes and a nice look, that are all very useful.

String Tables

In my opinion, these are by far, the COOLEST thing you can edit. Hey, don't like your start button text? CHANGE IT? I'll show ya how:

When I talk about string tables, they are the lables and text of what ever your editing. For instance, if you are editing the all famous, easy hack, notepad, you can find string tables worth hacking.

For example, in notepad, if you don;t save a document, it saves it as "untitled" and you want to change it to... nothing, you would open reshacker, notepad, and go to string tables. Open up 1, and find #4. It looks like this:

4,  "Untitled"

And thats the basis of a string.

[b]#[/b], "[b]text[/b]

Edit whats in that string, keeping the " 's and you'll be fine.

Make sure you compile your changes before you save or move on to something else.

Note, you can't make the string of just "". So either put a space in there ( " " ) or if that doesn't work, do "alt +0160" between the quotes. Thats is for strings :)

Icon Groups

Yeah, simply groups of icons. No big deal, but when deleting all icons, delete the icon groups, not the icons themselves.

Those are the parts to hack, now here is some suggested hacking material.

-easy

Notepad - c:\windows\NOTEPAD.exe (Good for practicing menus and icons and string tables)

explorer - c:\windows\EXPLORER.exe (Has everything, including bitmaps)

-harder

shell32.dll - c:\windows\system32\shell32.dll (everything, great dialogs to hack)

comdlg32 - c:\windows\system32\condlg32.dll (mostly good dialogs)

Now that you have hacked what ever you hacked, there are a few ways to go about replacing the old ones with the new ones, and I swear by a program called "Replacer."

Replacer, found here, can replace the old files with the new ones. You can't just SAVE over the old files all the time, if they are in use. So, if it is not a system file, simply exit out of the program and save over the old file, or use replacer. Replacer looks like this:

You can drag and drop the ORIGNAl file into the box, or type its path and hit enter.

Then do the same with the replacement file,

Then log off or reboot.

Remember, don't limit yourself to what you have seen here, I sure as hell haven't. Hack anything any everything your mouse touches for a better more customised workspace.

Here is a link to a guide on hacking Explorer.

-Advance

Edited November 3, 2004 by Advance

[dreamz Veteran]

nice work! i'm glad someone finally took the time to write up a guide to reshacker for all the newbies (i would've, but i'm too lazy :p).

here's another site with lots of reshacking guides: http://wint.virtualplastic.net/

[Advance]

What he never did was write a guide for the people that had never used ResHacker, making the process of learning it a slower one.

I tried to speed that up a bit.

[BrutalFluid]

Nice guide!