Windows comes with a rather attractive set of standard icons which are scattered throughout the operating system. One thing you may not know is you can make use of this icons on any of your shortcuts by going to the shortcut’s properties window and then clicking the ‘Change Icon’ button.
If you do not have a custom icon to use, take a look at Windows’ built in libraries by browsing to one of the following files located in your \Windows\system32 folder:
- shell32.dll
- wpdshext.dll
- moricons.dll (for some retro icons)
Anyone know of any other good DLL or EXE files which have a good set of standard icons?
Jason Faulkner is the man who brings you our daily tips. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
I found the following files on Windows XP:
compstui.dll
comres.dll
cscdll.dll
dmdskres.dll
dsuiext.dll
ieframe.dll (seems to be part of Internet Explorer 7)
inetcplc.dll
LMUIRes.dll
mmcndmgr.dll
mstsc.exe
mstscax.dll
netshell.dll
pifmgr.dll
progman.exe (good old Program Manager)
setupapi.dll
setupdll.dll
shdocvw.dll
spmipc.dll
syssetup.dll
upnpui.dll
urlmon.dll
wiashext.dll
wmploc.dll
xpsp2res.dll
These are not the only ones but are the ones I found more useful. No guarantee that they will all be present in your system.
Nice.
thanks so much, this was exactly what i needed
Yea, I’ve been using different icons for my desktop; problem is, how do ya keep them there? Every couple of weeks my “custom” icons mysteriously revert back to the standard IE icon for internet shortcuts.File shortcuts remain the same, so it must involve something to do with how I save something, right?
Any suggestions?
Thanks
[...] this week I wrote about making use of the Windows Icon Set embedded in system DLL files. While this can be handy, it becomes somewhat of a burden finding the right DLL file with the icons [...]
Another thing I don’t think is common knowledge, you can create your own icons. I use Microsoft Paint, resize the image to 32×32 pixels, then save it as *.ico.