Most of the Common System Icons are found in the following 2 .DLL files:
- C:\Windows\System32\imageres.dll
- C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll
Here's how to get all of the Icons from your computer into one folder, to help you in customizing Classic Shell & Classic Explorer:
- Download Resources Extract, from Nirsoft here: Resources Extract
- Run the File
- Where it says "Filename/Wildcard" put in any location on your computer, and select any .dll, .exe. .cpl or .ocx file, and click Open
- Delete the Name (but leave the extension, and put a ' * ' instead, like this:
- instead of C:\Windows\System32\explorer.exe
- change it to C:\Windows\System32\*.exe
- Select a Destination Folder on your hard Drive, such as E:\Icons\Extracted Icons.. it could easily be over 500 MB, or even a GB or more, depending on whats on your system
- Select "Icons" in the "Resource Types to Extract", and deselect all the rest
- Select "Scan Subfolders"
- in "Subfolders Depth", select "unlimited"
- Select "Automatically Open destination folder"
- in "If filename already exists", select "Overwrite Existing File"
- in "Multiple Files Mode", select "Extract all files into one folder"
- Click Start, and wait for it to finish
- its a good idea to run the scan a few times, and scan different parent directories for at least both EXE & DLL files, (and .CPL & .OCX are useful too) such as:
- C:\*.exe
- C:\*.dll
- C:\*.cpl
- C:\*.ocx
- D:\*.exe
- D:\*.dll
- D:\*.cpl
- D:\*.ocx
- E:\*.exe
- E:\*.dll
- E:\*.cpl
- E:\*.ocx
- etc
- always saving to the same folder
**You can run multiple instances of the program, so you can search several locations at the same time and add them all to the same folder
it might take a long time, and theres alot of Icons... so depending on your needs, you may just want to scan folders you know you need something from, such as:
- D:\Program Files\*.exe
- D:\Program Files\*.dll
- D:\Program Files\*.cpl
- D:\Program Files\*.ocx
- D:\Program Files (x86)\*.exe
- D:\Program Files (x86)\*.dll
- D:\Program Files (x86)\*.cpl
- D:\Program Files (x86)\*.ocx
- C:\Windows\System32\*.exe
- C:\Windows\System32\*.dll
- C:\Windows\System32\*.cpl
- C:\Windows\System32\*.ocx
- etc
**Click on "Save Config" & save it in the same directory as the program, to keep this search criteria easy to load