Introduction

WARNING! Replacing system files is a very risky and delicate operation. Please read this tutorial very carefully and proceed ONLY if you are sure you have understood what are you doing. English isn't my native language, if you don't understant some thing please don't proceed! Drop me a line and I'll try to help you personally. Important advice: Please do a back up of your system files BEFORE replace them with any others.

Goals of this tutorial: Learn some techniques in order to be able to replace system files in Windows XP in a safe and reliable way, and learn the basis of the system protection features (Windows File Protection and Hidden/System files).

Why I've wroted this tutorial. I've received a bunch of e-mails asking for instructions to replace system files. Sadly, I'd never can answer every single message with a full and detailed description of the process, and that's the main reason because I have decided to write this tutorial. I hope you find it easy, useful and understandable.

Feedback. If you have comments, suggestions or questions about this tutorial please feel free to drop me a line at my Contact Page.

Important note: If you have a second OS installed in your PC (such as Win9x or Linux) and your have access from this OS to your Win XP partition, please take the easy way: reboot in your second OS, and simply replace the files located in both folders (System32 and Dllcache) with the new ones, reboot again in XP and you're done. However, you'll find important information in the sections Background, Info for SP1 users and Thing you must know so please check it out.

Background