IE winXP vs 2k?

[rodzilla]

i have both WIN2K and XP installed on my system,now for some reason i've decided i would like to have the nice colorful IE toolbar icons from XP in the 2k version...i thought this would probably be a simple thing,i mean both OS's have identical versions of the browser installed,one is colorful one is not,so i figured maybe a registry hack or some path variable somewhere would let me just swap it over to point at the XP versions of these icons....but i can't even find where these icons are,does anybody have an idea how to to this?or if it's even possible?i'm beginning to think it's not,but as i said this is just two copies of identical software,there's gotta be a switch to flip somewhere that tells it how to display itself doesn't there?

or if anybody knows how to disable or reverse the color behaviour of the default 2k IE toolbar icons that would accomplish nearly the same thing,right now they "light up" in color when the mouse cursor goes over them,anyway to disable that function?so that they don't grey out?just have them stay in color all the time?or reverse it so they default to color and grey out on a "mouse over"?there's gotta be a way to mess with these icons somewhere.any and all idea's are welcome...

[videobruce]

Why do you want XP?

2k has the 3rd service pack out and has been out much longer than XP and you don't deal with product activation!

[gangsta]

well I know in Win9x this is partially controlled by a DLL file
I don't know about XP but it is probably the same method at least

you know I noticed when I run stardock desktop (shareware) it makes win98 desktop look like XP with a similar icon behaviour & effects.
The problem is stardock is buggy & it installs a spy file.
So I am all for finding a way to tweak non-XP windows to look like XP

let us do it guys!

[rodzilla]

videobruce- i don't want XP,i already have it installed....i use win2k tho and what i want is just some of the XP icons,which are very purty :)

now i know there are third party programs to emulate some of this stuff,but i hate that route,i don't want a third party prog running in the background or replacing stuff i don't want replaced,i have all the eyecandy from XP on my hard drive already i just need to know how to get win2k to use some of it.

does anyone know where the IE toolbar icons are stored?i've been looking through any dll's that look like they might have some connection to them but i haven't found them yet..i'm starting to think they are hard coded into either the browser or the OS but where? in what file?is what i need to know.once i know where,then i can try to figure out how to transplant them or redirect the browser in some way to find them...right now it's all just fishing in the dark cause i don't even know where they are,let alone what i might have to do to use em!

[rodzilla]

well the adventure continues...and i thought this would a simple thing to do!

i've downloaded IEAK6 from MS which allows one to build custom versions of IE,to replace some of the graphics and customize other areas of the setup as well.alltho the help files say you can use custom graphics for the toolbar icons...i can't find it in the program anywhere,i can add custom icons for other functions,i can control which default icons are shown and which not,but no where can i find any hint of how to change the default ones to something else!alltho the help files clearly state that you can,i think that must have been a typo or that function was removed :(

can anyone who's used IEAK6 confirm that,or tell me that i'm wrong and how to do it?

i really think the toolbar icons are embedded in the program somewhere and which set is determined by which version of IE for which OS gets installed...i don't know where they are or how to change them,the installs for XP and WIN2K are setup differently and i've tried swapping exe's and any other common files between the different OS versions and that has no effect whatsoever.

a registry search turns up a multitude of entry's for IE and all i've been able to manage with that route is changing the size of the toolbars,i'm not convinced that it couldn't be done from the reg but i need some direction as to what needs to be changed and where...if the switch is there it's obviously not been labled in a way that clearly identifies it.

so unless someone else has any ideas i'm done and abandoning the idea for now,or at least until i find some more information about how it all works.

[gary_fletcher]

I belive that they are part of the OS, I've noticed that programs that I install on XP inherit the colorful icons and toolbars from XP. They look quite normal on Win2k or Win9x