Change any folder background in Windows XP

BY  Yash -

hange any folder's background in Windows XP 

Most of you must have thought about it many a times.. Changing any folder’s background apart from changing that old desktop background(wallpaper) daily..

The idea sounds good- You are able to change any folder’s background to any image which you like..

I will teach you a simple method to do this without using any software( as softwares, according to hackers are “bad shortcuts for those who are too lazy to do something interesting” J). You can also experiment around and change other things related to folders..

The Desktop.ini  file

1-So whatever we are going to do here is related to this hidden and system file named desktop.ini which when opened is a text file and you can easily edit it.

For this your first task is to enable hidden files and system files by going to Tools>Folder options>View>select "Show hidden files and folders" and untick "Hide protected operating system files"

2-Each folder in windows xp will not contain this file by default. If you want to customize suppose, your folder named “Songs”, you have to go to its properties>customize tab>and do some customization and then apply it. As soon as you do some customization you would see the desktop.ini file inside your folder “songs”. So now this is the customization file for you folder “songs”. Open it.

By default it will contain this text-

[.ShellClassInfo]

IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll

IconIndex=4

I will specify what all these mean after completing our main task.

3-So now all you want to do for changing your songs folder background to a new image named suppose “songback” is this-

Copy paste this code before [.ShellClassInfo] in the file

[ExtShellFolderViews]

{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}

[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]

Attributes=1

IconArea_Image=D: \songback.bmp

Here the highlighted address of songback should be changed to the address of your background file.

Now save the file and refresh..

You are done.. You will see the new image as your background in that folder..

Simple and interesting!!

Note- The background image should be a .bmp or .jpg.  .jpeg will not work.

Here i have shown the snapshot of how my folder will look after making the changes-

So now we come to what other things you can do in this file-

You can add these entries and values to change certain things related to your folders.. Like you can-

1-Change the icon of you folder to any icon image

2-Show tips related to your folder when cursor is moved onto it.
3-Change the color of text of all icons inside that folder.

Example-

[.ShellClassInfo]
ConfirmFileOp=0
IconFile=Folder.ico

IconArea_Text=0x00000000 

InfoTip=Some sensible information.

ConfirmFileOp- Set this entry to 0 to avoid the warning "You Are Deleting a System Folder" when you try

 to delete or move the folder.

IconFile- Set this entry to the name of any icon you want for your folder icon(with extension .ico or .bmp(not preferred))

IconArea_Text- Set this value to  0x0 for black, 0x000000FF for red, 0x00FF0000 for blue,
0x0000FF00 for green AND 0xFFFFFF for white. This will change the icon text colors inside your folder.

 InfoTip- Set this entry to any information which you want to display when you move your cursor 

over this folder.

One more thing that i have discovered is that by this method you can't change the 

background image which you see when you open any drive. It is for folders only.

For changing the background of drives do the following.

1-Make a new text file inside that drive and copy the following in it-

[.shellclassinfo]
iconfile=%systemroot%system32shell32.dll
iconindex=127
confirmfileop=0
[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
iconarea_image=E:\abc.jpg
iconarea_text=0xFFFFFF
[ExtShellFolderViews]
{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}
{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}={5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}
[{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}]
PersistMoniker=Folder.htt
PersistMonikerPreview=%WebDir%folder.bmp

You need to change the text highlighted in pink to the address of your background image.

2-Now save this file as desktop.ini.And its done.

Refresh and you will see the new image as your background. 

Here i have changed the background of my C: drive.

 Never stop experimenting!! Be Smart Gadgeteers!! 

Happy Computing!! :-) :-)

Tags: window xp, window xp trick, hack window xp, best trick of window hacking