Restore Desktop Icons

Windows XP does not save the location of the icons on your desktop which means that a resolution change will change the location of the icons on your desktop as well, the bad thing about this is that Windows offers no way to restore desktop icons. That means that icon positions change whenever you install new drivers for your video card.

Icon Restore is a small software that has two functions: Save the current desktop icon layout and restore desktop icons from a layout that has been previously saved. The installation adds the layout.dll to Windows XP which provides this functionality which is great because you won’t have another one of those tiny extremely useful applications sitting in your system tray.

The options to restore desktop icons and save the icon layout are accessible when right-clicking system icons on your desktop. System icons are the My Computer icon or the Recycle Bin icon for instance.

Please note that there is a difference between a system icon and a shortcut to the My Computer icon. If your icon has a n arrow in it it is a shortcut and won’t provide the functionality. To get the real My Computer icon on your desktop do the following: Open the start menu, right-click the My Computer icon and select Show On Desktop.

There is no uninstallation routine for this application. The author provides an executable that can be used to uninstall the function again. Oh, the tool works on all versions of Windows starting with Windows 95 and ending at Windows XP. No word about Vista support on the authors homepage.

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Tags: windows software
Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows, software

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4 Responses to “Restore Desktop Icons”

1. Nick Oberan says:

   December 3, 2008 at 9:57 pm

   After two 15 year old kids used my desktop the icons have not returned. All i have now is a white screen and it was green. The kids don’t know what they may have done to hide the Icons. Is there any WAY to bring my Icons back
   that you may tell me? I’m 86 and don’t really know how this spook-box works. If you can help me I’d sure appreciate it.
   Thank you, Nick Oberan

   Reply

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1. 恢复桌面图标 » Ghacks CN says:

   December 16, 2007 at 1:31 pm

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2. Darius ‘Gizmis’ Stasiulis » Tvarka bus! (be politikų, su Icon Restore) says:

   December 17, 2007 at 6:02 am

   [...] sužinoti daugiau? Kūrėjų svetainėje arba Ghacks apžvalgoje. Verta paskaityti, nes progama turi keletą specifinių dalykų, apie kuriuos reikia žinoti [...]

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3. Caminews » Icon Restore: Save and restore your Windows desktop layout says:

   December 17, 2007 at 10:27 pm

   [...] [via gHacks] [...]

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