You can change the background and background color of your conversation window, you can add custom emoticons and you can switch your personal display picture with a couple of clicks. But some people are not satisfied with this level of MSN Messenger customisation and want to see contact list icons and most other internal graphics changed. These complete makeovers are usually called full skins and exist (and need to be updated) per build/version. Can find a couple of full MSN Messenger skins in our download section. Below you'll find a tutorial provided by Esoteric on how to fully skin MSN Messenger 6.1. Big thanks go out to him!

Welcome to Esoteric's MSN Skinning Tutorial

Note: Want to see all of the images presented for you on the internet? Then visit the Help section, located here.

Note: Whenever you see something that has been blurred, it has been done so to protect the identity of me or others

Step 1. Make sure that you have an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (both of which are  highly recommended (I use Adobe Photoshop) however you can get away with Microsoft Paint... Also you will need a Icon Editing Program, I suggest IconXP but you could just get a free one of the web and then convert it to a bmp, edit it in your image editing program and then convert it back to an ico.

Step 2. Make sure you have Resource Hacker handy. You will need Resource Hacker to change everything inside of MSN. It can be downloaded here.

Thanks to an e-mail sent by Jay B. he told me about PE Explorer which will display PNG's! You can download it here.
Note: Unfortunately, PE Explorer isn't freeware, so if you have a crack/serial I would like to know about it! (It has a 30 day trial)
Note: Also PE Explorer is easier to use then ResHack, and so some of these steps may be unnecessary. 

Step 3. Open up Resource Hacker and then go to File > Open and then get to the msnmsgr.exe and open it up, on the side panel you should see something like this:

All of the ones which have a box around them are new to MSN Messenger 6.0, so if you try editing MSN Messenger 5.0 you will not see them. The only folders we will get into are the GIF, JPG, PNG, Bitmap, and Icon or Icon Group (both are the same but Icon Group has the similar icons grouped together) and Version Info.

Note: If you don't have IconXP or a similar program then you will most likely have to go through each icon one-by-one in the Icon Folder.

Note: The next steps can be done in any which way you want. Also I suggest on making backups of your work regularly as I have lost some other work of mine because of an error when editing it, and please don't edit the MSN Messenger you use, just copy the files and work on somewhere else on your hard drive.

Step 4.1. Skinning the PNG's: Well as you can see when you open up the PNG Folder inside of msnmsgr.exe there is many different ones, just open up a sub-folder and take your choice of which one you want to edit first, when you click on it you will noticed it doesn't show the image, but instead code, so just do this:

That is how you save it, but as saving the 212 can be replaced with anything you want, but that is just how I remember which files belong where. But remember that the .png must be there when saving!

Step 4.2 Edit the graphic in any program of your choosing...

Step 4.3 Now that you are done editing it and have saved it you must bring it back into the msnmsgr.exe, you can do this by: Right mouse clicking on the PNG > 212 > 1033 file. Then going to Replace Resource...

Click on it and you should get another window

Just type exactly that in (although the resource name has to be changed with every different file you are editing)

Step 4.4 Your all done with that PNG, now on to the next!

Note: 212 in the PNG section is just my example...it is there but if you are working on a different PNG then when saving etc you must change that to the other PNG's number.

Step 5. Skinning the GIF's: You do everything the same except for when saving... Instead replace all of the PNG with GIF. 

Step 6. Skinning the JPG: Again, everything the same as PNG's except replace PNG with JPG.

If you have any questions, comments, or can tell me how to improve this tutorial then please leave me a message at Esoteric@Phreaker.net or my forum.