Making Custom Windows 7 Themes: Part 3 DLL Files
One of the obstacles in making Windows 7 themes is that there thousands of bitmaps “somewhere” in the DLL files. Here is a list of the most important files and DLL files that you need to know of if you want to fully customize Windows 7 and create some visually stunning visual styles.
Custom Windows 7 Themes Part 1 & 2
Did you miss part 1 or 2 of our new series “Making custom Windows 7 themes”?
Most Important File For Customizing Windows 7 Visual Styles
.msstyles Includes the most graphics – this is the most important file you need to remember!
We will have a lit of important Bitmap files stored in msstyles up shortly, so stay tuned if you are interested in making Windows 7 visual styles. If you have any suggestions please post below.
ExplorerFrame.Dll – Custom Navigation Buttons
explorerframe.dll Includes Forward and Back navigation buttons, very important file for making custom Windows 7 themes – learn more
Imageres.Dll – Custom Icons
imagesres.dll Includes all important Windows 7 icons, for a full list of icons stored in imageres.dll, click here
Basebrd.Dll – Custom Winver
basebrd.dll Includes winver images – this is cool to change Windows 7 to Windows 8. Mess around with it just dont break it!
Shellbrd.Dll – Custom Windows Logo
shellbrd.dll Includes screensaver image and various control panel images, including the Windows Logo on the Computer Properties panel (OEM info) – important file for customizing Windows 7 themes:
Important images: Bitmap 1050 2050 3050
Tutorial to change OEM logo in Windows 7
Explorer.exe – Custom Start Orb
explorer.exe Includes Start orb and various images of the Start menu. One of the easiest files to manipulate to create custom Windows 7 themes
Important images: Bitmap 6801, 6803, 6805
Oobefldr.dll – Custom Welcome Center
oobefldr.dll Includes images of Windows 7 welcome center, which is called “Getting started” in Windows 7. If you want to customize it, edit Bitmap 1033 in oobefldr.dll
Timedate.cpl – Custom Time and Date
timedate.cpl Time and date – If you want to customize the look and feel of the Windows clock, you can use timedate.cpl for a really custom theme
Other Important Files For Customizing Windows 7 Themes
shellstyle.dll Includes graphics for Windows 7 Explorer status bars
ieframe.dll Internet Explorer images
wmploc.dll Windows Media Player graphics
accessibilitycpl.dll Control Panel
netcenter.dll Network and sharing center
desk.cpl Control Panel
gameux.dll Games explorer
Authui.dll Includes Windows 7 login screen buttons
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Do you want to know more about making custom Windows 7 themes? If so, stay tuned for another tutorial that will further explain how to find the most important bitmap files stored in msstyles.
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Tags: creating-visual-styles Written by oliversk Saturday, August 6th, 2011
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Your 3 tutorials have been a real lifesaver for me, being that I have never made a theme, and it was a relative (for a novice) easy way to understand it. For my 1st theme I did minimal changes, really. I changed all .dll without problem and I was really happy.
However… after resuming my normal routine, I opened Word and noted many “ribbons” (?) missing, among them “View”. Also when trying to save a document, the navigation pane shows blank (as you see here). The same happened with firefox (and I assume with explorer, but I don’t use it ) and with excel. My adobe programs are fine (it’s why I was slow to understand there was a problem, they’re the ones I use the most).
Being a complete novice, I did exactly what your tutorials said, not modified anything more. The archives I replace where imageres.dll, explorer.exe and explorerframe.dll.
I read on a windows forum that I have to obviously return thing to normal, but before that, I really want to know what I did wrong or if there is some other solution (I LIKE my theme, don’t wanna replace it ;_;).
Miztli, I think I have had the same problem some time ago.
Here’s what I did to fix it
Explorer Sidebar Missing
I did it… it reseted my theme to the windows default. Still, thanks for answering.
really nice tutorial here, but i really REALLY want to know how to change the window “frames”, it’s hard to find it on the internet, so keep up the good work ^^ !!
When is part 4 coming out?