i found this out just playing around with explorer.exe using Resource Hacker, but if you open explorer.exe up and edit string table 38 and remove line 595 so that it looks like this:

STRINGTABLE
LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
{
593,  "Notification Area"
594,  "Running Applications"
603,  "The application is either too busy or unable to respond to your request to close."
604,  "Forcing it to close may cause that application to lose data.  Do you want to force it to close?"
}

the start button goes away.... but you can still use the windows key to bring up the start button menu. also if you edit line 595 you can change the start button text:

STRINGTABLE
LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
{
593,  "Notification Area"
594,  "Running Applications"
595,  "Enter Start Button Text Here"
603,  "The application is either too busy or unable to respond to your request to close."
604,  "Forcing it to close may cause that application to lose data.  Do you want to force it to close?"
}

but this is only for non-themed desktops to edit one that has a theme you have to mess with string table 37.

Very nice, i should give it a try!

Thanks godan.

I know LClock can also hide the start button (under Properties>Other), Im not sure if it uses the same method.

no problem, just one warning sometimes when resource hacker compiles the script it messes up so if you get an error trying to run explorer just edit the original again and recompile it.

Renaming the "start" word works for XP theme but it seems to limit to 5 letters if I remember correctly.

I didn't know you could remove the button - interesting.

Cool... If I add more letters, does the button expand? And what about the icon?

[edit] Yep, it expands. But if I change it to just a space, the taskbar won't show. O_o

I have been using "Start killer" for over a year, but it does not work very well, so I was after solution like this, but the problem is - when I press "winkey" to open it - it appears on the left-top corner of the screen - is that possible to move to bottom? (((-;

godan, thats interesting, i`ll have to get round to trying that!

DigeratiPrime, i like LClock. I found StartClock a while back. It replaces the start button text with the clock, thats about it, although with an older version you could press Ctrl+Alt+D and display properties would come up. I still have it if anyone is interested.