Windows 98 style flat icons in Windows XP

"There is no way to tell Windows Explorer to show the old flat-style icons. The reason for this is that the icons are all packaged together, and will use the highest bit-depth available (see this article for more details).

One possible way to get around this would be to use a third-party utility, and them attempt to find similar icons made by a third-party, or manually create an icon package from the Windows icons.

If you do go with the third-party route, I suggest you give this icon pack, this one, or this one a shot."

"If you can obtain the icon, in the form of a .ico file or the shell32.dll from Windows 98, you can do the following:

Open registry editor and add a string value with the name ""3"", containing the path of the icon file, in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons

This will override the 4th icon of shell32.dll (because the first icon has an index of 0), which is the folder or directory icon, with an icon of your choice."