Can't Locate Windows Folder? Don't need to!

[Guest Scath De Solas]

After some messing around and reading up in the forums, I've found out as others have stated to go through the registry. I've never messed with windows registry this much before and I've learned a lot in one day and I've successfully found a way to edit certain items, I'm still working on editing EVERYTHING of the windows folders so bare with me I will be updating as much as I can and making as many tutorials as possible.

Things I have successfully changed so far, simple things yes I am a first timer afterall:

All sidebar icons (active and inactive)

Customized Menus (Names of things, e.g. battery life now says Scaths Battery, etc.)

Taken out some menus

Things that I will be editing:

-Themes (Because for some reason some of us cannot access the Windows folder, the only way would be to find where the files are being used in the registry and change the file or folder location to a file of your choice. I suggest purchasing a micro sd card from www.cellphoneshop.net VERY CHEAP STUFF!!!!! Cost about $10 bucks for a 1gb card!)

-Status Bar

-Anything else I can edit

I want to find out if there is a way to edit the settings menus, etc.

ALSO, I have no problem sending out or creating for others custom icons. If you need any image files from the windows folder, I'm actually working on getting all of the files into a zip/rar folder so you may edit them yourself.

If you do edit them yourself and are using photoshop, for the .png files, make sure you have no background color, and do CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S and save with no Matte and a transparency as PNG-24 for best quality.

Any and all updates with picture tutorials/videos will be created with WebCameraPlus software... just because it's so much easier to take pics and vids of the screen that way lol

I'll repost more today, pics etc. After I solve some things and find things.

DOWNLOAD CeRegistryEditor it is the best! I've looked and tested other phone registry editors, they suck! CeRegistryEditor has everything you'll need! And the registry backup could take minutes to hours, so it's your choice to do one, and make sure you have enough space on your computer, I suggest if you dont buy a DVD-R or DVD-RW and use that for backups.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Scath De Solas

[Guest Scath De Solas]

UPDATE 1:

Changing Start Menu Background

Open CERegEditor

Connect phone to CERegEditor

Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Go to Software

Go to Microsoft

Go to Shell

Go to Rai

Go to :MSStart

Double Click "BKBitmapFile"

Change Value data: to any file you want as your background.

Example:

-I chose to use an edited file, the file I edited was CHome_framework_background_p.png

-I created a New Folder in "My Documents" called "Shadow"

-I renamed the edited file "StartMenuBackground.png"

-Thus my Value Data is "\My Documents\Shadow\StartMenuBackground.png"

I attached what it looks like now fully edited.

Any questions or comments just ask. Hope this helps. More to come!

You may also set views. It says Grid View 1. I dont know much about this yet. As well as TextColor. I'll be tweaking to find out.

UPDATE 2:

Here is a list of the the editable files in the Shell/Rai section and their file names (All located in Windows)

Changing Other Backgrounds

:MSClog (BKBitmapFile2.png)

:MSCdial (dial.png, dialbg.png) - dialbg changes your recent calls background

:MSBranding (BrandingBrick.gif)

:BrandingBox (branding.gif)

:MSCProg (BrandingBrick.gif)

("BrandingBrick.gif" is the T-Mobile Logo Banner

"branding.gif" is not even in the \Windows folder)

Changing alerts Backgrounds

:QuestionBox (Watermark_Question.gif)

:VolDig (Watermark_Volume.gif)

:SIMPinBKGround (DeviceLockBG.bmp)

:InformationBox (Watermark_Information.gif)

:ExclamationBox (Watermark_alert.gif)

:ErrorBox (Watermark_Error.gif)

:Callalert (Watermark_Incoming.gif)

Another file not listed that I have to locate yet is "BKBitmapFile.png". But the files listed above should allow you to customize a nice portion of the phone. Still working on the rest.

Note: My files ARE different I'm using a vista theme I installed. No matter what you just edit the files listed. I will supply a zip of the files listed.

Personalizing Menus

Inbox:

Open CeRegistry Editor

Connect your phone with CeRegistry Editor

Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Go to Software

Go to Microsoft

Go to Inbox

Go to Svc

Click SMS

What to Modify:

FriendlyName (Mine's set to Scaths Inbox, Normally it says Text/Multimedia at top in your inbox)

MessageSent (What the notification says after message sent)

CHome Windows Files:

In order to edit the CHome files you have to replace them. Unlock your registry first and your apps as well which have been previously posted where to get the files to do so. Use CeRegistryEditor to unlock your registry. Use file explorer You should be able to go into wherever you saved your new CHome files, click menu, then edit, then copy. Then paste in the windows folder. MAKE SURE THEY HAVE THE SAME EXACT NAME AS THE FILE YOU'RE REPLACING. It may rename the file and put "Copy of" infront of it, just go to edit again and rename, backspace the "Copy Of" and then exit that and go to start menu then settings then home screen and change the home screen to Windows Simple, then let it load, once it loads, go back to start menu, settings, home screen, and replace it with T-Mobile Default or Brown or whatever you have it set to. Tutorial coming soon. YOu'll have to do this for all the files you want to change in Windows folder.

Changing Text Colors

Start Menu:

Open CERegEditor

Connect phone to CERegEditor

Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Go to Software

Go to Microsoft

Go to Shell

Go to Rai

Click :MSStart

Double-Click "BKBitmapTextColor"

Under "Value as:" be sure HEXadecimal is selected.

Under "Value Data:" you may put any HEX color code value you want. (Some codes may be different then for a computer) Red=0000FF, Blue=FF0000, Green=00FF00, Yellow=00FFFF, Cyan=FFFF00, White=FFFFFF, Black=000000, Pink=FF00FF.

Mess with colors til you find something you like.

To change other colors of other menus etc I believe you need to search in CeRegistry Editor in all registries for "TextColor", "BKBitmapTextColor", "Color", or even "Text"... and just do the same thing you did here. I only came up with a few values searching the local machine. Changed them all to red.

Call status, when you're on the phone with someone, text is red now.

Change Emoticon Abbreviations

If you want you can change what emoticon shows up for whatever it is you want, any text abbreviation or characters you want.

Open up your Shadow folder on your computer, or from your shadow, and go to "\My Documents\UAContents\Emoticon" and open/edit the file "Emoticon_240x320.ini"

ImageFiles.zip

Edited July 2, 2008 by Scath De Solas

[Guest nether_bud]

:D Help! I changed my start menu and now I can't get it into List view!

I recently updated to the 6.1 rom and went into Explorer to change my start menu like I did in WM6, now the link to change the menu to list view errors out. I went into the registry and updated GridView to 0, which works as soon as a select an folder then on the next screen it goes back to grid and all the menus stay that way. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Guest Scath De Solas]

:D Help! I changed my start menu and now I can't get it into List view!

I recently updated to the 6.1 rom and went into Explorer to change my start menu like I did in WM6, now the link to change the menu to list view errors out. I went into the registry and updated GridView to 0, which works as soon as a select an folder then on the next screen it goes back to grid and all the menus stay that way. Does anyone have any ideas?

There is no 6.1 and I think you may have downloaded the wrong incompatible version. Only 6 exists for the Shadow right now that I've found. Officially. Re-install WM6. Your registry values seem to have gotten all screwed up somehow that's why you're probably getting that error.

OR

Backup all of your data such as, images, music, documents, etc. Anything you don't want to lose. And do a reset of your device.