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How to change an icon in .exe
Exe Icon Changer
If you want to change icons in exe file, Resource Tuner will be your first choice. But first off, you should remember that there are more than just one icon inside any executable file.
Icons are stored in .DLL and .EXE files in Icon Groups. Each Icon Group can contain multiple icon images, each with a different size and/or color depth. Common sizes include 16, 32, and 48 pixels square, color depths include 32-bit (24-bit with 8-bit alpha channel), 8-bit (256 colors) and 4-bit (16 colors).
That's how an Icon Group from our beloved Notepad looks like:
The standard Microsoft Windows Vista icons now include 3 additional formats: 256x256-4bit, 256x256-8bit, and 256x256-32bit. They are PNG compressed and ignored (but not rejected) by Windows XP. Uncompressed versions of the icons will work on both Windows, the PNG compression is used to reduce the icon size and embedded in the ICO file for the 256x256 images only.
When Windows prepares to display a main application icon, a desktop shortcut for example, it simply chooses the first Icon Group resource (or with the numerically lowest identifier) listed in the application's resource section.
Replacement source
When replacing icons and cursors, make certain that the replacement sources are the same size and have the same number of colors as the item to be replaced (e.g. a 16x16 4 bit icon cannot be replaced with a 32x32 8 bit icon).
How to replace an icon in the executable file
1. Expand the 'Icon' folder.
2. Select the icon item to be replaced in the Resource Tree.
If you already have an icon ready, just skip these 3rd and 4th steps:
3. With this icon resource, select the 'Save Resource As...' button from the button bar (first button from left) and save the file to your desktop.
4. Use AWicons icon editor (or any of your favourite icon editing programs) to edit this icon (.ICO) image. Make sure that your new image is no bigger that the image it is replacing.
Now we are going to change the icon:
5. Back inside Resorce Tuner, highlight an icon resource item to be replaced and doubleclick it. Or click on the Resource Editor button on the button bar (third button from left). You will see the following dialog:
6. Select the Open Source File button (Ctrl+O) from the button bar as illustrated above and select your edited file. Or paste the image from the clipboard (Ctrl+V).
7. Press OK to close the Resource Editor and select 'File' -> 'Save File As ...' to save the changes you've just made to the target file. If warned that the image size has changed, click "Yes" from the next dialog box to update the file size.
If you need to update existing icons, or add new ones for several hundred files, you are more than likely going to want some way to implement this with a batch file. Whenever large numbers of files have to be processed or to be accessible through scripting / batching, you need Resource Tuner Console.
See also Replace icons from a batch file
Take a look at 
Resource Tuner Screenshots
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