Show Your Desired Text on Desktop by Customizing Windows Vista & 7 Build Number

Each Windows OS has its own build number which is shown in its Beta builds but not shown in RTM versions. Like Windows Vista SP1 has its build number as "Build 6001".

In this tutorial, we'll change this build number to our custom string and will show that custom string on Desktop. You can put your name, your website URL or anything which you want to show.

It might also become very useful to customization pack creators who can show their customized text like any beta build number or their pack version/name on Desktop.

So here we start our tutorial:

1. First thing is to enable "Build Number" on Desktop. There is a simple registry trick to show it.

Type regedit in RUN or Startmenu Search box and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

In right-side pane, change value of "PaintDesktopVersion" DWORD to 1 (Create the DWORD value if its not present).

Now log off or restart your system and you'll see the Build number on Desktop:

2. We have completed first step. Now we have to customize this Build number. For this task we'll need to edit a system file "user32.dll.mui" in Resource Hacker.

If you don't know about Resource Hacker, you can read following tutorial:

All About Resource Hacker in a brief Tutorial

To edit the file, we'll need to take ownership of this file otherwise we'll not be able to save our changes. Taking ownership is very easy. First follow the instructions given in following topic:

Add Take Ownership Option in File / Folder Context Menu in Windows Vista

Now open My Computer and go to following folder:

%windir%\System32\en-US

You can paste the above string in addressbar and press Enter. It'll open the folder. Now look for the "user32.dll.mui" file. When you find it, right-click on it and select "Take Ownership":

NOTE: If your Windows language is different, then replace en-US in the above path with your language code.

3. Now open "user32.dll.mui" file in Resource Hacker. You can simply drag-n-drop the file in Resource Hacker window.

Once you open the file, go to "String Table -> 45". In right-side pane, look at the 715 and 716 entries. The 715 entry contains the first line of Build number i.e. "Windows Vista (TM)" and the 716 entry contains the second line i.e. "Build 6001".

We need to change their text so that we can show our own desired text. That's very simple. Simply delete the text within double-quotes "" and type your own desired text in both entries as shown in following screenshot:

After changing the text, click on "Compile Script" button and at last save the file.

4. That's it. Now restart your system and your desired text will be displayed on Desktop:

PS: Please be very careful while editing any file in Resource Hacker. Changing Build number is completely safe and it'll not cause any problem.

NOTE: This method should also work for Windows 7. Not tested.

This article was posted in Resource Hacker, Windows 7, Windows Vista.

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39 Comments

Nikolaj

did you know that you can use this to kill the watermark in W7
grkn

How do we do for xp sp2 and SP3 also does not please no text is written is very strange, but the article does not go as sp1, but very old sp1 as SP3 does not need to do SP3
sixty9thcupid

Hey Vishal, thanks for the information but the thing is I am using Windows 7 I followed the same steps. All my bad luck is I could not save the file "user32.dll.mui". It says windows can't rename the file. I don't understand that.

Hope u'll give clear information regarding this issue.
Thanks and bye for now.
Ezra Sudheer.
VG

^^ First take ownership of the file.
Carlos

I take Ownership of the file, open it whit ResHacker, compile the text, save it and f*cking ResHacer tells me that they can't rename original file!!!

Please help me! Should I create a backup and rename the original to .old? ahh!
VG

^^ Try to save the file at some other location, then rename default file to any other name like "user32_backup.dll.mui". Now copy your new edited file in "Windows\System32\en-US" folder and restart your system.
andythecurefan

this method also worked on Windows 7 RC1 Build 7100 (32 bit) but I can't get it to work on 64 bit. Thanks.
Someone

Cannot create file. Please Help!
VG

^^ First take ownership of file and then save the file at some other location. Now rename original file to some other name like "user32_backup.dll.mui" and then copy your new file to " %windir%\System32\en-US" folder. Restart your system.
Macs Rule

Hi Vishal, please make a a XP version. Thanks