How to change the text of START button

As you can see from the screen capture above it would seem that the five character limit isn’t etched in stone. The button expanded to accept the text I entered with no problem. I’ve been using the system for a few weeks now with no adverse effects. That’s not to say I won’t discover something down the road a bit, but for now I feel comfortable with the changes. If you’d like to try the procedure I used, the instructions follow.
Step 1 – Modify Explorer.exe File
In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems. Navigate here to download Resource Hacker.
The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe
The category we are going to be using is String Table. Expand it by clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37 followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will display the stringtable as shown in Fig. 02. We’re going to modify item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on the current Start button.

There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry. In my case I used ElderGeek as shown in

Compare the screen captures in Fig. 02 and Fig. 03 and you’ll notice that after the new text string has been entered the Compile Script button that was grayed out in Fig. 02 is now active in Fig. 03. I won’t get into what’s involved in compiling a script, but suffice it to say it’s going to make this exercise worthwhile. Click Compile Script and then save the altered file using the Save As command on the File Menu. Do not use the Save command – Make sure to use the Save As command and choose a name for the file. Save the newly named file to C:\Windows.

Step 2 – Modify the Registry
Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run and type regedit in the Open: field. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon
In the right pane (Fig. 05), double click the Shell entry to open the Edit String dialog box . In Value data: line, enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file. Click OK.
Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all went as planned you should see your new Start button with the revised text.

Here's an interesting note I received from Daniel B. regarding an experience he had with this procedure. I haven't verified this personally nor have I experienced the situation when running AdAware, but it's worth adding it here as a caution. Thank you, Daniel, for sending it along.
Good evening, I would like to mention that your site helps me a lot in understanding Windows XP and suggest you add a few lines to your article titled: Change Text on XP Start Button For Windows XP Home and Professional Versions
I have executed the procedure to modify the text on the XP start button and it works fine. I did that a week ago.
Today I downloaded Lavasoft’s Ad-aware freeware and ran it.
Being curious by nature I looked at the scanned results before suppressing anything.
I was surprised to find that the shell modification used to change text on xp start button was picked up by ad-aware.
I did not delete it!
I can only image what it would have done to windows if it had been removed.
So I suggest a warning be added to your article to the effect that shell modifications and ad-aware could lead to …. Windows not starting.
Thank you
Daniel B
Hello,
I have found your site to be very informative and helpful. However, there is one thing that I believe needs mentioning. I had read before that it was possible to change the text that is displayed on your Start button. I followed your instructions and soon enough, the ‘Start’ button on my XP Pro SP1 said ‘stop’ instead (how clever, right???). All was well until I decided to download the network installer for MS’ new SP2. I ran the installer with all virus scanning software off and updated my machine to SP2. I did the initial Automatic Updates setup and prepared to boot into my desktop. It appeared to be working except my desktop never fully loaded. I got this message saying that Windows Explorer had encountered a problem and needed to close. Blah, blah, blah, you know the drill. So I restart. Same thing. I thought I was in big trouble until I tried ctrl-alt-del. Success! I was able to start a new task (regedit), point my Shell back to explorer.exe, and restart. Low and behold, after I entered my password, my desktop came up and everything was normal. SP2 has worked like a charm ever since.
I thought that maybe it was just something wrong with the update to SP2 and later tried to modify my Shell file again. I restarted and got the same error. I think it would be a very good idea to post an update to the text changing site telling users that if they run the update to SP2 with the modified Shell, their computer will become unusable. It’s really too bad – I enjoyed the heck out of telling Microsoft where to stick their ‘Start’ button…
Thanks for the great site and keep up the good work!!!
Adam
Thanks, Adam. The bottom line here is that you should revert back to the original explorer.exe file that was backed up in Step 1 of the article. Failure to do so can result in serious consequences.
A Note from Ion
I thought I'd have some fun and follow this guide.
However I was far too lazy to do the reg hack, and simply directly replaced the original explorer.exe file with my modified one (after backing up both of course).
By replace I mean rename the modified file to /explorer.exe/ then rename the original file in the windows folder to /explorer.exe.original /(or similar). Next just copy and paste the renamed modified file into the windows directory and re-boot.
Doing it this way eliminates any AdAware issues /and/ keeps the right click menu intact.
Thanks for the inspiration, I've move on to changing the button colour now as well. Great (and dangerous?) little tool Resource Hacker.