You can change most of them by replacing the icons in your imageres.dll in
C:\Windows\System32\imageres.dll
for x64 systems you have to edit imageres.dll in
C:\Windows\SysWow64\imageres.dll
as well.
Then clear your icon cache and restart.
To edit the file is pretty simple, you can use resource hacker.First take ownership of the original file, Be sure to back it up! Install resource hacker, after that just double click the file you want to edit, in this case imageres.dll, find the icon you want to replace in icon group and right click on it and replace resource, a dialogue box will open then browse to your new icon with an .ico extension, then click replace. An icon with a resolution of 256x256 pixels is best. Then go to file, click on save as, save to your desktop, as imageres.dll. Rename the original and either copy to or move the modded file to the correct folder.
Repeat the process with the other imageres.dll for x64 Windows systems.
Then do this to clear your icon cache,
To Manually Rebuild the Icon Cache using the Command Prompt
1. Close and save anything that you are working on. This command will kill explorer and restart the computer when completed.
2. Open the Start Menu, and type cmd in the search box and press enter.
3. In the command prompt, Copy and Paste each command line below exactly as is and press enter after each command.
WARNING: The last command will restart the computer, so be sure to close and save anything that you are working on first.
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
shutdown /r
4. The IconCache.db file has now been rebuilt.
You can change as many icons as you like, and you may find you would like to change some icons in shell32.dll, which are also located in the same two system folder(s) that the imageres.dll('s) are located.
If you google replace icons in imageres.dll your bound to find a decent tutorial.
Also Icofx is a great freeware program to give you a reference for the icon number.
There are several other icon programs out there. Find one you like.
Resource hacker can be used to change icons in .exe as well and don't let it intimadate you it isn't too hard!
You can do it!!!
