It's shockingly easy to create your own icons in Windows XP. Open MS Paint. On the Image menu, click Attributes. Type 32 for both the Width and Height of the document, and Select the Pixels under Unit. Click OK to create a new 32x32-pixel document: the size of an icon.

Now create your image of the icon and save it with the extenion .ico. (The extension ".ico" tells Windows that it's an icon file.) You just created an icon! Now you can change any shortcut or folder to your own icon—just browse to it on your hard drive.