[Originally posted 28 August 2007 by Help_Line, moderator and MVP, Windows Mobile Owners Circle.]

If you are getting into changing colors on your device and are using a registry editor, you might get some value from this site that one of our moderators (Linley) mentioned in a post to a user. 

It is a pretty cool tool to have bookmarked!

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/

So if you like it and want just a bit more for those tweaks you are trying on your device, there is another FREE online tool that you can use to blend colors here at http://colorblender.com/

Jack Cook Experience Mobility (http://www.experiencemobility.com)

A FREE registry editor is RegEditSTG (I found it via a search, don't have link right off).  It's plain jane, but it works like regedit.exe on XP machines.

It helped my change the reg key that shut off Media Player 11 when I changed screens on my Blackjack II.  Now, I can check mail and still listen to podcasts on A2DP.

Another great free registry editor for pocket pc is Total Commander, it is a powerful tool and is available from here

WARNING -
The following post contains advanced information regarding your windows mobile device. Unless you are experienced in the area and know what you are doing, the following could potentially harm your device. 

Make sure you read everything carefully and drop me a PM if you have any questions!
 

 When provisioning the colours using a cab file. You can deploy the colours straight into the registry and this will actively change.

Eg.

Within a registry characteristic in your cab file. to set the base hue...

<characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Color">
            <parm name="BaseHue" value="123" datatype="integer" />
 </characteristic>

Or if you really want to get crazy.. When the TSK file installs it provisions information into the registry, which is converted to that, so you cant just extract that data and re-deploy it. It has to be deployed in base64 from what i can tell.. eg.

 When you extract the color settings, it will look like this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Color]
"SHColor"=hex:\
      FF,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,DD,DD,DD,00,FF,FF,CC,00,FF,FF,FF,00,82,82,82,00,82,\
      82,82,00,DE,DE,DE,00,74,74,74,00,FF,FF,FF,00,74,74,74,00,74,74,74,00,74,74,\
      74,00,82,82,82,00,74,74,74,00,FF,FF,FF,00,DE,DE,DE,00,9D,9D,9D,00,9D,9D,9D,\
      00,FF,FF,FF,00,82,82,82,00,74,74,74,00,FF,FF,FF,00,82,82,82,00,84,84,C3,00,\
      82,82,82,00,74,74,74,00,FF,FF,FF,00,FF,FF,FF,00,00,00,00,00,FF,FF,FF,00,00,\
      00,00,00,FF,FF,FF,00,82,82,82,00,9D,9D,9D,00,FF,FF,FF,00,FF,FF,FF,00,DE,DE,\
      DE,00,74,74,74,00,FF,FF,FF,00,74,74,74,00

If you simply do a registry characteristic and deploy that data straight back, it wont work.. What you need to do:

Remove the \'s

Remove the line breaks

Replace the ,'s with spaces

Convert this from hex to base64.

You will end up with this:

 "/wAAAAAAAADd3d0A///MAP///wCCgoIAgoKCAN7e3gB0dHQA////AHR0dAB0dHQAdHR0AIKCggB0dHQA////AN7e3gCdnZ0AnZ2dAP///wCCgoIAdHR0AP///wCCgoIAhITDAIKCggB0dHQA////AP///wAAAAAA////AAAAAAD///8AgoKCAJ2dnQD///8A////AN7e3gB0dHQA////AHR0dAA="

So now we go :

<characteristic type="Registry">

<characteristic type="HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Color">
            <parm name="SHColor" value="/wAAAAAAAADd3d0A///MAP///wCCgoIAgoKCAN7e3gB0dHQA////AHR0dAB0dHQAdHR0AIKCggB0dHQA////AN7e3gCdnZ0AnZ2dAP///wCCgoIAdHR0AP///wCCgoIAhITDAIKCggB0dHQA////AP///wAAAAAA////AAAAAAD///8AgoKCAJ2dnQD///8A////AN7e3gB0dHQA////AHR0dAA=" datatype="binary" />
        </characteristic>

   </characteristic> 

In our cab file that the settings are deployed....

This works for the owner information fields too.. I don't know if anyone has tried to provision those with straight registry entries, but you need to perform the above aswell.  

 on the note of registry editors.  My favorite is this one. MobileRegistryEditor

It basically allows you to use program on your desktop to edit the registry of a tethered device.

So , connect with activesync, launch the app and you are away (Much easier than fiddling around on the device!)

And if you need to edit the secured keys, then use RapiConfig first to up your security role.  

That is the same registry editor I use...great little tool!