Replace Windows 7 Icons with Windows 98 or XP's

Weboh · 18 Jun 2014

I'm trying to replace all of Windows 7's Icons with the icons from Windows 98 or XP. I realize there's a lot to change, and they're all stored in different places. I know shell32.dll is a place for a lot of them--could I simply replace it with Windows XP or 98's shell32.dll? Or, more importantly, has someone does this already? Does someone have the modified files that will replace the icons?

BlackSparrow · 19 Jun 2014

Hello Weboh,

You can have a look at this link here: 10 Ways to Change or Create Desktop Icons for Windows - wikiHow
It has 10 different ways to change/create icons for Windows 7, but as far as I know it is not possible to change icons to icons from a previous version such as XP.

Hope that the link is helpful, and if not just ask and I'll try and find a way to change the icons back to a previous Windows version.

Weboh · 19 Jun 2014

Nah, that's not it. I want to change things like the standard folder and disk drive icon and everything.

A Guy · 21 Jun 2014

Welcome to Seven Forums Weboh. You can mostly do it with a program like Stardock Iconpackager and an icon pack

Windows XP for Windows 7 by djeos546 on deviantART

I'm not a huge fan of this as I have had to help people restore to default when they had trouble removing it. But it does work fine, it's only been some having trouble reverting at some point.

Changing them all manually would be quite a task, and they 2 OS use different icon sizes, so you do need resized icons, not just ones from XP. There are tons of ways to change XPs icons to look like 7, but not visa versa. If you are new to 7, you might find you will grow accustomed to it in a short time. Most of us prefer it a great deal over XP, and for customizations, it is no contest. I never want to tell anyone what to like, but 7 is quite good.

Note

No matter what, you'd want to make a complete system image before doing anything. You can easily revert back if something goes wrong.

A Guy