Customizing WIndow 2000 Appearance...And Pics

I was a long avid user of WinXP Pro since its release. I say "was" because I recently started a dual boot between XP and 2k and honestly, my XP boot has only seen use for play NFS:MW because I havent felt like reinstalling in 2k.
2000 seems more redundent in loading apps and handleing memory. That and games dont tend to misbehave as much.

The only thing I miss is some of the appearance options with XP like transparency and a few other little things and the picture viewer in XP for flipping through car pics (Im a huge Honda fanatic..epecaily CRXs!!). Is there an app for Win2k that does kinda of the same thing with pics that the picture viewer does in XP? And what apps do you guys use to customize the appearance of Win2k?

Im seriously considering scraping my XP boot.....

I don't use apps. I modify resources. For example...
However, the Picture and Fax viewer is completely missing from 2000. There is a Kodak picture viewer that is all but useless, but Irfanview is by far the best alternative, and it is free.

Whoa....thats really cool. Flashy but simple...How exactly did you go about that? Since you said you didnt use apps but modified resources....\

And BTW Irfanview is perfect....thanks!

Well, Microsoft had made it somewhat easy by storing most of the textual and graphical information we care to edit in resources that as of now are generally unencrypted.
So, to edit something, open the respective file in your favorite resource editor, my choice is ResHacker (google it).
The example I will give is NTOSKRNL.EXE, which contains the 16 color Windows boot screen, and how to change the boot screen.
First, make a backup of NTOSKRNL (ALWAYS make a backup, and always keep backups of your original files)
Open NTOSKRNL in your resource editor, and find the bitmaps. If you are using pro, Bitmap #1 is the one you want, and if for some reason you are running server, change #4.
The boot screen is 640x480x4bpp, and must be saved as such in order to be able to boot Windows. Anything else, and Windows will fail to boot.
To edit the bitmap, copy it into Photoshop or your favorite image editor, and make your deisgn. Obviously, the little scroll bars cannot be moved, although you can alter what they look like. When you get your design the way you want it, make absolutely sure that you save it as a 4bpp bitmap. In addition, if you have access to the color index, the very first color in the index (usually black) determines the frame color painted around the image.
Assuming you have successfully made your new boot screen image and have properly saved it, open NTOSKRNL in your resource editor and replace the default image with your new hotness, and save. ResHacker will automagically save a copy of the original file in case you for some reason did not back up the file already. Do not try and save over the Windows file, it is locked and in use, so you have to save a copy in another location.
To actually import the file into Windows, you cannot do it from within Windows. There is a program by the name "replacer" that can, but I have had nothing but problems with it. My solution is to just take advantage of my dool-boot system, and replace the files from another boot, which makes fixing mistakes a hell of a lot easier. However, if you don't have a dual boot system, you can load a disk based operating system such as DOS or Knoppix and accomplish the same task.
As long as you aren't in the relevent Windows boot, just replace the old NTOSKRNL with the new one, and cross your fingers. If you did it correctly, you should see your new boot screen. If you did something wrong, Windows will spit out an error before it gets to the boot screen, which will require you to replace the modified file with the original file to be able to boot into Windows again. This is why you always make backups.
All in all, it is pretty easy, albeit time consuming and sometimes frustrating.

I love using reshacker. I made my own stuff for xp. It's been a while though. Do I recall right or not, can't you open dll files as well? I think I used this program to extract all of the windows xp icons. Maybe it was another. I have soo many programs that I have tried out over the years.

Yeah, ResHacker will open any Win32 PE, DLLs included. Most of the default icons are stored in Shell32.dll, and you can edit them through that file, although it is needlessly complicated as icon locations are stored in the registry, and can be changed by merely changing the path to each respective icon. While I prefer to do things by hand, there are numerous freeware programs that have a painless GUI method of changing the paths for you, and my time is valuable enough that I am more than willing to do it the easy way. My favorites in that respect are Winhand/Madonote, followed by IconPhile.
What's more is that this isn't limited to just Windows files. If you want to change the splash screen, icons, or whatever for any program that is kind enough not to encrypt their resources, you can.

Yeah, I did it to extract the files more than to change their location. I also use Icon Workshop to create and edit them. Nice program actually. You can import all kinds of files and make icons to fit different resolutions and color depth.

Aside from that, the registry is where I do most of my customizations. Quick and easy, and if you back up your registry, painless as well. Juat use the search function and you can usually find what you are looking for. Then if you like the outcome, create a .reg file to automate it for future use.

Sweet thanks guys.