I am referring to the window that always pops up when something is questionable, for example a window that comes up saying “Really Delete?” and gives you a Yes or No button. Can I edit the registry or something, so that for example the buttons say something personalized, like “Hell yes!”, or “Fuck NO!”?
Interesting idea. If it’s possible, you’d probably have to hexedit a binary or dll. I once edited the Start button to say my name instead by hacking explorer.exe. It had a limit of 5 characters, though, which was fine for my 5-letter name, but you might have trouble personalizing within 3 and 2 letters.
[QUOTE=J you might have trouble personalizing within 3 and 2 letters.[/QUOTE]
If that’s what it comes to, may I suggest “meh” and “ew”?
You could change “Yes” to “Nah”, and “No” to “Ok”. Then just don’t forget.
ETA: As to how to do it… I got nothing. Sorry.
EATA: Actually, I wonder if something like WindowBlinds would not be able to do that. I’ve not installed anything like that (Except BootSkin) for a few years now though. Try www.customize.org and see if there’s any tutorials perhaps.
No. Not without re-writing the program.
The programmer chooses which Windows API’s to use in a specific situation, and which options to allow in them, and writes that into the program. This is NOT generally a user-controllable option.
For most dialogs the programmer just uses a constant value that indicates for Windows to show a “Yes/No”, “Ok/Cancel”, or whatever type of dialog. So, for instance, if you use an American application on a Japanese version of Windows, dialog buttons will be in Japanese as the text is coming from Windows not the program itself.
I doubt that the text is in the registry (though it’s entirely possible.) Probably there’s a file somewhere that gets loaded by the DLL.
Also bear in mind that Windows XP uses Windows File Protection (WFP). This monitors the digital signature on certain files (the stuff you want to patch) and replaces them with a “safe” copy.
You can disable WFP but it’s not the best idea.
Another problem will be that some Windows apps (Office, for example) don’t use the standard system GUI libraries. They have their own so you’d need to patch them too. One option might be to see about localisation and whether it’s possible to do your own. If so, simply copy the normal American locale files and change the couple of entries you want.
Certainly in the older versions you could just load up a hex editor and patch away. I used to run a customised Amiga with “interesting” dialog boxes.
cheers,
tim
I don’t think that sort of change is in the registry. I have an application that can change a TON of things in exe, dll, ocx, cpl, scr, and res files. If i have the blessing from TPTB i’ll post the name, but otherwise feel free to contact me.
You can change “Start” to almost anything you like. I don’t know about the lenth limit but i’ve made it say “Slick RULES” before. That’s part of a string table in explorer.exe. You can also pull bitmaps out of exe or dll’s, edit them (such as a splashscreen) and the insert something totally different, recompile (part of this application) and then you’re off to make some silly mayhem. An example of changing program bitmaps for explorer.exe is for the Start Menu. Rather than have it say Windows XP Professional, you can change it to Codename Whistler Server (built-in), or Windows XP Embedded (also built-in to explorer.exe).
It’s a fun tool, but you have to use caution when using it. And if you want to make changes to something like explorer.exe you’d have to end task first since it won’t recompile and save while its running. I’d recommend changing the Shell option in your registry to use something like explorer1.exe and save a hacked version to use at your discretion.