Group Policy for all users - but one

Clarifications

This gets rid of about 97-99% of the icons in XP and doesn't really take that long. You will need ResHacker, Replacer, and a blank icon. Get the blank icon from the attachments located at the bottom of this post.

The two files we will be deiconing are shell32.dll and explorer.exe. This will kill most of icons you will see, of course excluding the program icons. We will be using ResHacker scripts to make life much eaiser. So first download and extract ResHacker to c:\program files\ResHacker. Do the Same to Replacer but put that in ...\Replacer.

Since we will be deleting the majority of the icons (all the ones in shell32.dll and explorer.exe, you might ask why they wont turn up as a "missing icon" icon. Well, to fix that, we are going to make things much much simpler by replacing THAT icon making it blank.

So we first want to make a back up of three files, you can use this script I made, save it to a .bat file and run it.

CODE :

mkdir c:\backup000\
copy c:\windows\explorer.exe c:\backup000\
copy c:\windows\system32\shell32.dll c:\backup000\
copy c:\windows\system32\user32.dll c:\backup000\

Thats the back ups. Now to put ANOTHER copy into the ResHacker directory.

CODE:

copy c:\windows\explorer.exe c:\program files\ResHacker
copy c:\windows\system32\shell32.dll c:\program files\ResHacker
copy c:\windows\system32\user32.dll c:\program files\ResHacker

Now that that is done, time to pull out the ResHacker scripts. If you are new to using the scripts I suggest you check here. Although you probaly won't need it.

CODE:

//Script for shell32.dll - save as shell32.txt
[FILENAMES]
Exe=shell32.dll
SaveAs=shell32
Log=shell32.log

[COMMANDS]
-delete icongroup ,,
//I HATE ICONS

There is one, save that as shell32.txt in the ResHacker directory, here is the next:

CODE:

//Script for explorer.exe - save as explorer.txt
[FILENAMES]
Exe=explorer.exe
SaveAs=explorer
Log=explorer.log

[COMMANDS]
-delete icongroup ,,
//I HATE ICONS

So now you should have done the following:

Extracted ResHacker and Replacer to their folders in Program Files
-Run the back up scripts or copied them manually
-Downloaded the blank icon
-Saved the two script files to the ResHacker Directory.

Done? Good, time to run the scripts.

If you have done everything right, this wont be a problem.

Click Start and go to Run. Type in (with quotes)

CODE: (NOT ?code?)

"c:\program files\ResHacker\ResHacker.exe" -script "explorer.txt"
and hit enter.

Then go to run again and type

CODE: (NOT ?code?)

"c:\program files\ResHacker\ResHacker.exe" -script "shell32.txt"
and hit enter.

If you didin't bolls it up, go to your reshacker directory and see if there are two new files named "explorer" and "shell32" If so, good, if not, you are bad.. go back and figure out what you did wrong.

Delete all the log files and the scripts and the old files, you dont need them anymore. You now should only have the two new files in the RH directory.

Lets forget those for a minute and go to user32.dll

So fire up ResHacker and open user32.dll. Its in root\system32\. Replace EVERY iconGROUP there with the blank icon by expanding the tree, clicking the icon dgroup and one by one replacing it. Once you are done save it as user32 in the ResHacker directory.

Now we have all three files reshacked and in our reshacker directory, so its time to fire up replacer and start changing those ol' system files.

Disclaimer: This is the point where you should back off if you were unsure, this is when the real changed are made. I take no responsibility... :)

So you can drag the system files or type in the path's to them but either way, replace the file in the windows / system32 folders with their corresponding files in the ResHacker directory.

When you are done reboot! Good luck and happy computing without icons :>
Thanks to Neowin Forums..

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

On a term server, to set up different desktops for the different groups of users, you can create say %systemdrive%\CustomDesktops\GroupA and a second location %systemdrive%\CustomDesktops\GroupB for example. Load each location with the icons you want for their respective desktops. Create a group policy to enforce a redirection of the desktop for each respective security group (User Configuration / Windows Settings / Folder Redirection / Desktop). Link the new GP accordingly (to an OU containing the term server, most likely). Test, and set permissions on the custom desktop folders so the users can't delete the icons.