Rename Your System Icons

[Chappy]

Personalize Your Desktop Icons

Hi Folks

We all know that Vista is a major "Visual Treat" for those of us that like color, texture, and clarity in our lives. I remember so many people complaining when XP was released that it looked like "TeleTubbies", and immediately went about trying to make it look exactly like W95 or W98 did.

Myself, I embraced the changes because I always wanted more color on my computer screen...Greyish-Tan was never my idea of "Color". I can only imagine how they feel about Vista Aero now...LOL!!

Anyway, for those of us that like to "Personalize" our system's, here's a little tweak that you can apply to take your "My Computer" and Recycle Bin" desktop icons, and rename them to whatever you like! Yep, you can change the name of your system icons Universally. It takes a registry tweak to do this properly, so if you haven't read my How to Edit the Windows Registry Tutorial and you're not familiar with doing registry edits, I suggest you read that tutorial before trying this.

I've renamed my "My Computer" icon to "Chappy's Vista Box" & my "Recycle Bin" to "Useless Sh*!" (oops). This also changes these names on every place inside your system where they normally appear so this change is Universally Applied.

This is a tested tweak but as usual, Besttechie.net makes no guarantee that you may not harm your system if you do something in the registry that you're not supposed to do, or don't follow the directions here carefully. Unless specifically marked, all names are typed Without Quotation Marks.

For the My Computer Icon:

First, the My Computer and Recycle Bin icons must be displayed on the desktop. These "should" be there by default but in case they're not, right click an empty spot on the desktop and select Personailze, then in the left pane, click "Change Desktop Icons" and put a check in the My Computer & Recycle Bin boxes. Now -

1) - Open the Registry Editor by typing "regedit" into the run box.

2) - Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

3) - Click on "{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}" to highlight it and show the key values in the left pane.

4) - Right click the subkey "LocalizedString", select rename and change the existing key named "LocalizedString" to "LocalizedStringOLD"

5) - With the "{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}" still highligted, right click it and Create a new Expandable String Value key, name the Key "LocalizedString"

6) - Double Click this new key to bring up the Value box, now enter the new name for your icon in this Value Box

7) - Exit the Registry Editor, hit F5 to Refresh the desktop and Admire your results!

For the Recycle Bin Icon:

Follow all the instructions above except the CLSID for Recycle Bin is "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}"

Have some fun with this one, you can change them to whatever your heart desires...go ahead...be "Naughty"...