Changing the Start button requires the use of a binary file editor (or hex editor) to alter a critical Windows system file. If you kill this file, bad things can happen to your system.

Stop here in you don't know about backups and registry editing. Also please take out life insurance before you start .

This method has been successfully tested on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP and therefore should be quite safe. Obviously, I do not accept any responsibility for system problems or data loss.

Now with that being said, lets get to changing your start button. First of all you will need a binary file editor. The best one i have seen and I have used for years is Resource Hacker avalable for free here:
now that you have this tool lets get to work

Editing Explorer.exe File
Now in order to make the changes we need we need to open the "explorer.exe" file typically found in c:\windows\

Make a backup copy of "explorer.exe" to "explorer_backup.exe". If anything goes wrong, you'll always be able to restore your backup and get your system back to the way it was before the hack.

Open the resource hacker and select the "explorer.exe" file.

Once you have opened explorer in Resource Hacker you will notice a menu appears on the left side of the program with a lot of different expandable menus columns. The category we are going to be using is String Table.

- Double-click String Table which will show several numbers
- Double-click String 37 (if windows XP, 38 for another version) to expand it
- (If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38 instead.)
- Click 1033
- Double-click the start text in the right column.
- The text start should be highlighted and the surrounding quotes should not.
- Now type the new text you want in your start button. It can not be more than 10 characters in length and must continued to be surrounded by those quotes.
- Once you edit the text, the Compile Script button will become enabled. Click the Compile Script button
- Click File -> Save As and save your new file as explorer1.exe in the windows directory.

Editing Registry
Now we need to tell the OS to use our new edited explorer file.
1. Click Start -> Run -> type in regedit and ENTER
(If your Regedit is disabled leave a comment on this recipe and i will teach you how to enable it.)

2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon

3. Double click on the registry entry named Shell and change the Value Data from "explorer.exe" to"explorer1.exe"

4. Click OK to close the registry editor

5. Log off user and log back in

6. Enjoy your newly hacked Start button with your text in it

7. Post a screenshot in the comments to show off you new hacked Start button!

Just edit the explorer.exe in memory whenever it's paged in

Then you can change the button text without worrying about breaking your windoze box.

But then it will be only for that session, you will need to change the start button everytime you restart or log on your PC.
This tutorial is for changing the start permanently.

If you edit it in memory you could just have a program load as a BHO to explorer.exe that does it; it also has the advantage of being able to change it to reflect something realtime...like cpu utilization. That would be a cool project...