Start Button Colour/color

Start Menu Colour

Board with the standard green start menu? Then you’ve come to the right place, below I will explain how to change your start menu colour with ease.

Before I start please note that you will be editing system files for this, although the sections needed won’t cause any system failures please note that you can damage your system beyond repair if you change something you shouldn’t therefore I will not be responsible for any damage done to your machine.

What you will need
• Graphics Editing program
• ResHack (http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/)


Getting started

Explorer your system and locate folder “C:\Windows\Resources\Themes”, I will be using the Royale Theme from Microsoft. Copy the folder of the theme you wish to use, whether it be Royale, Luna or any other theme you wish to edit, copy this to a work folder.
Within your new theme folder you will see a file that has the extension .MSSTYLES. Mine is called Royale.MSSTYLES

Open this file with ResHack and navigate to the tree: “BITMAP->ROYALE_STARTBUTTON->1033” although yours will say
“BITMAP->THEMENAME_STARTBUTTON->1033” THEMENAME will be the name of the theme you’re editing,
You need to extract the image to work from, “Action->Save Bitmap”, you can’t edit the size of the bitmap because it will stretch to the size needed. The original for my theme looks like this:

But if you are using LUNA then yours will look like this:

You can either create yours from scratch, but make sure to use the same image size, or use the original and use the select tool, or work on top of it, just note the PINK, this is transparent to the system so be careful.

The top bar is the standard image, the middle is the roll over image for when your mouse is over it, and the bottom is when the menu is selected.

Once you have finished your picture, save it as a BITMAP “BMP” locate the tree above, and replace the image with your own.

Save your theme file, just make it has the same file name as the theme your going to use and has the extension .MSSTYLES
Change your theme to something else, IE “Windows Classic” within the Appearance tab of display properties. Replace the old theme folder in “C:\windows\resources\themes” with the one you have just edited.
Change to your theme, and see all your hard work in its glory.

Writing PDF at weekend.