| Remove generic icons from Extensions
 When booting his Mac, Joe Solensky was bothered by the annonymous icons that paraded across the bottom of his screen.
"I have tried making changes via the Get Info window and rebuilding the desktop there are still a few that (apparently) lack anything more than a generic resource. They look pretty lame and out of place amid all the color and artwork that appears on the others."
This little edit will give your boring extension a colorful personality at Startup!
For this example, I chose the Palm Pilot HotSync extension. When viewed in the System Extensions folder, the file has a custom icon, but when the extension is displayed during startup, the icon is generic! The reason for this is because, when viewed in the folder, the Finder assigns the icon from the Desktop database. It has an icon to assign because the Palm Pilot application software has a bundle resource assigning the icon to the INIT. During Startup, the Finder hasn't loaded yet, so the extension displays a generic icon.
Regardless, if an extension displays a generic icon during Startup, this exit will fix it.
 Open a copy of the extension in ResEdit. There probably won't be any icon resources in it, so you'll have to create some.
 From the Resource menu in ResEdit, select Create New Resource.
Type icl8 in the text box and select OK.
 Once the editor opens, you can create your icon. For now, only create the icl8. Do not drag the icon to the other bit sizes.
In my example, I copied the HotSync icon from the Get Info window. (Remember, this icon is from the Desktop Database.)
 Once you have added the icl8 icon, close the editor and from the Resource menu, select Get Resource Info.
Change the ID number to -16455.
Close the Info window and reopen the icl8 resource.
 Now you can create the other icon bit depths by dragging your creation to the other boxes.
 The last thing you need to do is tell the extension to use its new custom icon.
From the File menu, select Get Info.
In the lower right corner, check the box that says Use Custom Icon.
I have not had to rebuilt the desktop for the new icon to be used. Replace the original extension with the new one and restart the computer. As the extensions display their icons, you should have a new one in place of the old generic!
Bryan askes:
I read your edit for adding a custom startup icon to an extension that shows a generic icon. And was wondering if it was possible to give an extension that has no startup icon one, with ResEdit?
Yes, you can! It doesn't work on shared libraries, or drivers, but I was surprised at how many more startup programs revealed their identities.
Follow the same basic steps in the previous edit: make sure the extension or control panel has an icon family with ID# -16455, and that when you "Get Info" on the file from within ResEdit, be sure to check the "Use Custom Icon" box.
These are the key points to the edit: regardless of what other icons are in the file, you need to create one with ID -16455. You need to tell the application to use the icon by checking the Use Custom Icon box.
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