Windows 7: Win Explorer Background Change

Thanks. That's all I needed -the offset 748. I will try it tonight and report if it works for me.

No, that didn't work for me. First, there is no F0 F0 F0 at offset 748. I found one at 948, assumed it was a typo in your message. But changing it to D4 D4 D4 didn't change the dialog color. There are other occurences of F0 F0 F0 and I can try changing them one by one, but that's what I was trying to avoid by asking here

Ah.....guess you must have the mod variant file made from visual style builder. If it is then the address is not 748. The address that i given you is from MS original Aero Msstyles extracted variant file.

Nope, I have the original msstyles file, with just the taskbar image made opaque. The VARIANT file is untouched. I am using 64-bit version though. Maybe that's the difference?

I have check both x86 & x64 variant file the address is the same...strange....
Maybe if you want.. you can upload the original Aero.msstyle of yours... see whether i can help to locate the
address......

Thanks for the help. Here's what I have. One file is from Ultimate 32, and the other is from Home 64. Both are stock.

Ok...i have looked into the two attached files and the Hex-Address is right 748..
I think you might have mistaken the address as the left most column 740 ( see image below )

Type Ctrl + G or goto in the search tab in most of the hex-editor and key 748 (hex) it will bring you to the specific address.

Anyway i have mod the 2 file for you in x32 & x64 to D4 D4 D4.

Replace the mod file and enjoy the new color.........


Download : Modified msstyles.rar

Thanks, that worked. But something very fishy is happening. For me Visual Studio shows the offset of the change being 6F0. I even exported the old and the new binary file and ran fc /b newfile.bin oldfile.bin and it showed the only difference being 3 bytes at address 6F0.

On the other hand Visual Studio has a problem saving the msstyles file. It is not a permission problem because I'm saving it under new name and to the Desktop. Maybe some resource is not quite compatible with Visual Studio and causing it to fail, which may also account for the 72-byte difference.

I also tried Resource Hacker, but it is worse - it doesn't let me edit the hex values and the addresses start from some huge number, like 000EC24B8 instead of 00000000.

Is there any free resource editor that can be used reliably for editing msstyles? All I want is to edit the hex values and to replace couple of PNGs. I would hate to have to write my own.

Glad it works for you......

Here is a Freeware Hex Editor XVI32 i always use....

Goto: Freeware Hex Editor XVI32

The hex editing part is not the problem. Visual Studio does a good job at that.
The problem is a resource editor that can extract the hex resource, replace it with the edited version, and save the msstyles file. that's where Visual Studio fails.

I suspect Hex Editor XVI32 is not capable of editing the resource inside the msstyles file directly. Am I right?