How to compile Windows Vista icons? January 28th 2006

This article explains basic properties of Windows Vista icons and describes how to use Vista icons in your applications.

Find more information about Vista icons in an article explaining differences between XP and Vista icons.

Vista icons

Windows Vista icons contain a high resolution 256x256 pixels images. These images are used exclusively by Vista and they are stored using PNG-based compression. Explorer dynamically resamples them to required resolution.

An icon with Vista image format. Large resolution makes it possible to add an additional effect - a projected shadow.

Compiling Vista icons

Although numerous dynamic libraries and executables in the current Vista build contain compressed icons, Visual Studio (including VS2005) resource compiler refuses to accept them and aborts with:
"error RC2176 : old DIB in VistaIcon.ico; pass it through SDKPAINT".

Solution

It is hard to guess when or how is Microsoft going to address this issue. Right now, it is necessary to use alternate resource compiler, manager, or tool.

The following tool was prepared to deal with the problem. It has a very simple command-line interface and you can integrate it into your build process as a post-build step. The tool can replace or add an icon into an executable file using the Windows resource API.

Download the tool from here: ReplaceVistaIcon.exe

The tool accepts two to four arguments:

ReplaceVistaIcon.exe executable.dll icon.ico [icon_ID [language_code]]

Note: If you have an exe file with multiple icons, Windows Explorer uses the first icon as the application icon when browsing folders or in start menu. Compile your application with an XP-compatible icon and then replace it using the tool. Although the tool is able to add new icon into an executable, it would add it at the end of icon list and Windows Explorer would ignore it.
Conclusion

If you have experience with Vista icons in other build environments such as gcc, Delphi, or Builder, please share your knowledge and add a comment below.

Resources

RealWorld Icon Editor homepage.