In the vast majority of applications for the Windows operating system, graphic images used in toolbars and menus are stored in the resource section of the module in the icon format. Windows icons are sets of image-mask raster pairs, thereby allowing you to store several icons of different resolutions with transparency support in one file. There are many free icon collections available today. But sometimes for research and experimentation, you need to pull an icon out of an existing module.
Necessary
Resource Hacker program
Instructions
Step 1
Open the PE module in Resource Hacker. In the main menu, click on the "File" item. Then select the "Open" item. A file open dialog will be displayed. Change it to the directory where the file from which you want to extract the icon is located. Select the file from the list showing the directory contents. Click the "Open" button.
Step 2
Search for the icon you want to extract. After the PE module is loaded, a panel representing a tree control will appear on the left side of the application window. It will contain information about all the resources of the module in the form of a hierarchical representation with the grouping of resources by type. Expand the "Icon" section. Next, expand the subsections of this section sequentially. They will display elements whose names will correspond to the numeric identifiers of the icons. Select items in sequence. View icon images in the far right pane. Do the same for the "Icon Group" section.
Step 3
Start saving the found icons. Allocate the required resource. Click on the "Action" menu item. In the displayed submenu, select the item corresponding to the operation of saving the selected icon. The name of the item looks like: "Save [section: subsection: identifier]".
Step 4
Save the icon. In the "Save resource to …" dialog that appears, specify the directory where the icon file will be saved, as well as its name. Click the "Save" button.
Step 5
View the saved icon. Use the capabilities of image viewers, Windows Explorer, or the capabilities of the file manager. Make sure the extracted icon was saved correctly.
