Customize “New Folder” and “New Shortcut” Text in Windows XP Context Menu

Whenever you create a new folder or shortcut in Windows XP, the default name for the newly created item is set as “New Folder” or “New Shortcut“. Did you ever wish to customize it?

This tutorial will help you in customizing the “New Folder” and “New Shortcut” text, so that whenever you create any new folder or shortcut, you can see your desired names instead of the default ones.

You’ll need to edit a system file “Shell32.dll” which is stored in “%windir%\System32” folder, here %windir% means “C:\Windows” folder if your Windows is installed in C: drive.

We’ll edit this file in Resource Hacker. If you have no idea of this software, please go through following tutorial:

All About Resource Hacker in a brief Tutorial

Once you become familiar with Resource Hacker, make sure you have run WFP Patcher. It disables WFP (Windows File Protection) service. This service protects editing of system files and you’ll not be able to edit “Shell32.dll” file until you disable it.

If you don’t want to disable WFP, you can save the modified file at some other location and then replace default Shell32.dll file with your new modified one using Replacer.

So here we start our tutorial:

1. Open “%windir%\System32\Shell32.dll” file in Resource Hacker and go to:

2. Now in right-side pane, you’ll see default “New Folder” and “New Shortcut” strings:

3. You just need to replace the default strings with your desired strings as we have removed the “New” word from both strings:

4. Once you finish, click on “Compile Script” button and save the file.

5. Restart your system and now you’ll see your customized names whenever you create a new folder or shortcut:

NOTE: If you get “Cannot create file” error message while saving the file, please check following tutorial:

How to Fix “Cannot Create File” Error Message While Saving Files in Resource Hacker?