Changing your MDC Icon

This blog post has two objectives: welcoming J Allard as Chief Experience Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Entertainment and Devices Division, and showing you how to change your device’s icon at WMDC.

Well here’s what you need:

1. Some sort of Icon editor/creator software (I used Stardock Icon Developer);
2. WinCE Cab Manger or Visual Studio to create the CAB file;
3. One Windows Mobile 6;
4. A Windows Vista Powered PC;

The first step will be of course choosing the image you would like to appear as soon as you connect your device to your PC.

As an example I used the carismatic J Allard. Please take in account that the Icon you will be creating will have pre-defined sizes like 255x255 (WMDC Image), and 64x64/32x32/16/16 wich are the icons that will appear in Windows Explorer.

Next you will have to create a new CAB:

1. Name the CAB file “sync.ico”;
2. I used WinCE Cab Manager and added the file with the following path: “%CE%”;
3. As you might have noticed I have included a link to J Allard profile. In order to do this you have to create the followinf keys: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Activesync\OEM Links\Allard”;
4. And the add the Following strings:
   • description (name of the link)
   • Icon (image to appear)
   • priority (order in wich it will appear if there are more links)
   • url (link to the site)

Now just save the file and copy it to a Windows Mobile device. Preferably a device that will be connected for the first time to ou PC, otherwise you will have to uninstall the previous information that was synced previously.

To do so you must have your device connected and go to your Control Panel, System, and select Device Management. Find the Mobile devices tree and expand it. Next right click your device and uninstall it.

Afterwards restart both you PC and your device, and connect them again.

Notice: doing this will delete the current partnership

The final result is in this file that you can download and install in your device.

I hope you liked this tutorial, and let me know what you used for your WMDC Icon, and share some screenshots :)