sp2 network activity icon question

Hi. I am new at this. I understand enuff to get me into trouble.

So here is the deal. sp2 puts that network connected icon in the system tray. It does not have the familiar front/back screens that light up when traffic is going one way or the other. I loved that thing. The new one just buzzes across the bottom, evidentily indicating a connection.

However, if you rigth click on that icon and choose status, you will see the older style where each screen lights up alone or together or not at all.

I was going to replace them, in xpsp2res.dll. BUT. I cannot find the older ones anywhere except netshell.dll. And to complicate it a little more, I am wondering how the new programming will affect it if I did replace them.

On the new one, a set of 3 icon groups are just stepped through over and over until a disabled or error icon appears. The old one may sit blank, then blink in, then out, then both, then blank. How or where would one look to, go about chaning this over?

I used reshack and a few ohter oddball utilities I have picked up over the years. I do not code in C or whatever it is in those dll's, but I did not see any place that stood out to me as being an obvious place to edit the code.

I was also unable to find any information on possible registry entries that may be of help.

I do not wish to use a 3rd party app to do this. I don't learn as much that way, and this is purely about learning something new.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Sul

#362778

netshell.dll will still control status icons for a wired connection. However, you say that your network icon just buzzes across the buttom. I'm assuming it has that little yellow ball? This indicates that Windows is attempting to make or repair a connection.

If this keeps happening, then there is something wrong with your connection. Replacing the icons does not affect the programming at all.

The new one is stepping over those 3 icons until disabled or error icon appears, because there is a problem with the connection. If you can fix the connection, once it is fixed, then it will display the two computers, and modifications to icons 190-195 will be what you want.

#362787

@Sulfuricus - You do not need to code to do this. You can NEVER edit the code for any applications that you can double click and run. These are called Binaries. Then, if you are using an open-source application, you can also get the Source Code which you can edit and then compile into a binary. Not sure if you understand any of that because I word things very badly.

#362833

Ah. How strange that my connection works fine but I still get those connecting icons then. I can access the router, other computers, etc. I am not sure then since I am using static ip/subnet/gateway exactly why that would be. Strange.

But that would explain why it is doing that.

As for the binary, yes I understand that. I was more in reference to the code that points to the icon to use in certain conditions. Such as:

when network packet sent, show icon 1

when network packet recieve, show icon 2

when no packet, show icon 3

when both send/rec, show icon 4

this way I could replace icons with other ones but would know when and why they were being called. Or so I think.

I did not see (or did not know I was) the code that tells which icon is being used for what. After a long crash course last night and today, I see that there are layers of dlls being called. So now I am going to play with using some dll calls in VB. That should give me a good way to apply some of this.

So I thought maybe the easiest thing to try would be to find the dll that handles system wide "minimize" and "maximize" routines. I'll be darned if I can find the dll that has that icon in it. I know that any exe will use a certain dll to call that common code, but I am missing it. Granted, I cut my teeth last night on this stuff, lol.

So, assuming I can figure out which dll has that icon (if anyone knows ), and assuming that I can find the correct dll in which the code to actually do the min/max exists, is it reasonable to assume that I can do an API ( i think) call from VB to that library to execute it on the proper window (I know, have to get the PID of that window, which looks like another API call or similar)?

This is just a hobby for me, so forgive any retarded assumptions.

Or, because MSDN is not very friendly for getting help, at least for me, does anyone know of a really good resource (link) that may give me some meat to chew on?

Thanks for the replies,

Sul

#362952