How to Edit the Text of Items in Windows 8 Charms Bar

It's always fun tweaking our system modifying Windows dll's editing texts, etc. People even took editing the start button text in Windows 7 as a challenge - untill we released the Start Button ToolTip Text Changer. In this article I'll show you how to edit the text in the Charms Bar on Windows 8 consumer preview.

Change Windows 8 Charms Bar Text

First you will need to download Resource Hacker to accomplish this task.  It's a freeware and you can download it from here.

Step 1:

Quickly create a system restore point first. Then go to C:\Windows\System 32\en-US

Step 2:

Locate twinui.dll.mui file and copy it to your desktop.

Step 3:

Right click on twinui.dll.mui and click on Open with and scroll down and select “Look for an app on this PC”.

Step 4:

Now go to the installation directory of Resource Hacker and select  ResHacker.exe.

Step 5:

Now you'll see a similar screen as seen in the picture below

Step 6:

Expand “String Table” and scroll down to “444” or “445” and select “1033”.

Step 7:

Now you can change the text you like and click on “Compile Script” and go to File and click on Save.

Step 8:

Now on your Desktop you'll see two different files twinui.dll.mui and twinui.dll_original.mui. Now you have to copy twinui.dll.mui to C:\Windows\System 32\en-US. Before you paste the file you need to Take Ownership of the file.

• Right click on twinui.dll.mui under C:\Windows\System 32\en-US and go to Properties
• Go to the Security tab and click on Advanced

• Now click on “Change” under Owner

• Type in your Username and click Ok

• Now select your Username from the “Permission Entries” and click on “Add”

• Now select “Select a Principal” and type in your username

• Now click on “Full Control” and click Ok

• Click Ok again and click the Properties.

Now you can rename the file to twinui.dll.mui.old and copy the modified twinui.dll.mui.

Step 9:

The final step is to restart the “Windows Explorer” from Task Manager

and you'll have your modified Charm Bar.

In case if you want to revert, delete the Modified twinui.dll.mui and rename twinui.dll.mui.old back to twinui.dll.mui and restart the Windows Explorer again.

Thanks to Mike at Beatmasters-Winlite-blog.de for this tip.