How to Change Windows 7's Orb (Start Button)

Are you tired of the boring Start orb in Windows 7? While you can change the look of a lot of Windows 7's interface without the use of special tools, changing the Start orb will take a little more effort. Thankfully, there are community-developed tools that can making changing the orb almost as easy as changing your wallpaper. See Step 1 below to learn how.

Create a System Restore point. While changing the Start orb is usually a problem-free process, it is always wise to create a restore point before changing any system files. You can quickly access the Restore Point program by clicking start and searching for restore. Select "Create a restore point" from the list.

Click the "Create..." button.

Name the Restore Point and then click "Create".

See this guide for more details on using the System Restore tool.

Download the orb changer. While you can use a PE (Portable Executable) editor to find the icon files for the Start orb, it is much simpler to use a program called "Windows 7 Start Button Changer". This is a free program created by the Windows 7 enthusiast community.

You can easily find the program by searching for "windows 7 start button changer" using your favorite search engine. Try to download it from The Windows Club (the developers) to ensure that you have a safe version.

Unzip the button changer. The program is not installed like traditional programs, but instead simply runs from wherever you have it saved. See this guide for details on unzipping files, but typically you simply need to right-click on the file and select "Extract Files".

Take ownership of Explorer. Oftentimes, the orb changing program will run into errors if you don't have the correct permissions for Explorer. To prevent this from happening, take full control of Explorer first so you don't encounter errors later.

Open your Windows folder on your hard drive. You should see the "explorer.exe" file in the base Windows folder.

Right-click on explorer.exe. Make sure that you are logged in as an Administrator.

Select Properties.

Click the Security tab.

Click the Edit button.

Check the "Allow" box for the "Full control" entry. Click Apply.

Rename the button changer program. Open the folder that you extracted the button changer program to. Find the program labeled "Windows 7 Start Button Changer v 2.6.exe1", right-click it, and select Rename. Delete the "1" from the end of the filename to turn it into a standard EXE file.

Run the button changer program. Right-click the newly renamed file and select "Run as Administrator". If you don't run it as an Administrator, you will receive an error.

Choose your new orb images. When the program starts, you will see the currently selected orbs. There are three different orbs for each set: neutral, hover, and clicked. Each replacement file will contain all three versions of the orb. Click the "Select & Change Start Button" button to choose a new file.

The Windows 7 Start Button Changer program comes bundled with 10 replacement orbs. You can also download more online from a variety of sources such as deviantArt. Make sure that any replacement you choose contains all three orb states.

The program will automatically backup your explorer.exe file. If you want to change orbs to a new image, you should first revert to the original by clicking the "Restore Original Explorer Backup" button. Once the original has been restored, you can choose a new one using the above steps.