I am running Vista Home Premium SP2 and I was following articles on customizing the context menu. I used Resource Hacker to hack system32.dll.mui file as per steps in article from askVG.com. At first none of the changes I made were implemented, and now all of a sudden I have this (see below) context menu appearing even on the desktop. Some of the entries were added using regedit , but now I have lost the "show desktop Icons" feature of the original menu. Can I download a fresh mui file somewhere and start over? What other options do I have for restoring the context menu to its proper state? I tried system restore to the oldest restore point I have and still this context menu is appearing.
NB: I do not have a full install disk, only a recovery disk on DVD I made as soon as I got the box home. Please help.

Hacked Context Menu jpeg
I tried inserting the image in the post but it didn't show, so here's the link.

LH,
The article I worked from is here:
Hacking the Context Menu Tutorial
At first I didn't see any changes to the context menus and then, I know It was a big mistake, but the following caused me to do it...should have just renamed and moved to another folder, but it was late at night and I was getting tired...

Also if you are getting error “Can’t create file…“, that means you have edited and saved the same file recently and there is a backup file which needs to be deleted before saving the file again. Go to the "System32" folder and you’ll see a file “Shell32_original.dll”. Delete it and try to save the file again.

After that I guess I lost all hope of recovering the file, and by the time the the switch happened my restore points were not far enough back to help. One of those hit your forehead hard with the palm moments and groan moments . If I can just find a way to get another clean unadulterated version I think I can fix it.

Ran that, and the only thing noticable immediately is that it unpatched Vista Glazz's patch of uxtheme.dll which I had to re-do. I then searched the CBS.log file for shell32.dll.mui and here are the parts of the log that contained the reference

2009-11-03 07:40:25, Info CSI 000001cc Hashes for file member \??\C:\Windows\System32\en-US\shell32.dll.mui do not match actual file [l:30{15}]"shell32.dll.mui" :
Found: {l:32 b:AEdPgZCiegNghg0200jhSpMH5BG4qY4b88vmM7mY/dE=} Expected: {l:32 b:fHcGctlOfuixq/IREGPQaiHSEUhtylQV2Wsz+7KdxbM=}
2009-11-03 07:40:25, Info CSI 000001cd [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:58{29}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\en-US"\[l:30{15}]"shell32.dll.mui" from store
------------------and------------------------
11: Hard Link File: Source = [l:258{129}]"\SystemRoot\WinSxS\x86_microsoft-windows-shell32.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6001.18000_en-us_59a9c699d8dba3f4\shell32.dll.mui", Destination = [l:90{45}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\en-US\shell32.dll.mui"

Still no change to the context menu.

Rebooted a few times already and still have the problem menu. Thought I'd also try Recuva ...saw a few deleted files, all of which were unrecoverable since they were overwritten long ago. Checked the recovery disc. Used 7Zip to extract files from the iso and could not find it there. shell32.dll was, but not the mui.

Any other thoughts? My roommate has Vista 64 bit and I wondered if it would make any difference if I copied his file on to my 32 bit system. Would the files be incompatible? The problem so far is not so much of a disaster, but it is an annoyance. Why did it take so long for this to pop up after I did the hacking? Nothing seemed to have changed on the context menus for a couple of months and I assumed that the hack was merely unsuccessful till now.

I also think that if someone could open the file in resource hacker and copy and paste the menu items code into one or more text files and arrange to get it/them to me I could then paste it in and recompile and every thing would be set right. Menu 215 and 220, and String Table 1895 were the parts of the file that were worked on to bollix it all up, so the original code would be all I need to set it right.

Thanks for that, I will now mark this thread solved
(see the forum topic here Where will the current state of ... for my comments on marking topics solved)
Again, Muchas Gracias.