If you use Visual Studio Express, you may have been disappointed by its lack of an icon editor. I've recently come across an amazing icon editor called IcoFX. This beauty extracts from DLL's and EXE's, and creates new icons with an interface that looks like a paint program. It exports and imports standard bitmap formats, and just generally does a great job. Best of all, it's free! Even if you are using a version of Visual Studio that includes the icon editor, it's worth it to give IcoFX a try.
Link to IcoFX - The Free Icon Editor