Change all the icons that you want in windows

The freeware IconX lets you to change any icon that is displayed in Windows Explorer. It can change the icon for specific file types, e.g. jpg images or doc documents, but also of folders and even drives.

The installation is simply and straightforward. Download the software from the developer website and right-click the IconX.inf file afterwards. Select the install option from the context menu to install it as a shell extension in Windows. Please note that you need to contact the author to receive a validation code because the software was shareware and is now freeware.

After all of this is done right-click a file, folder or drive and select Change Icon from the context menu. A window pops up showing the path to the file, folder or drive. You will have to choose a icon library, some of which can be loaded from the developers page, and all the icons of that library will be displayed.

Just click on the icon that you want to use and use the optional "Use icon for all files of that type" if you wish that as well. Changes will be visible immediately and you can repeat the process if you don't like the icon anymore.

Update: IconX is no longer available. Here are a couple of alternatives that you can use that make available the same functionality. If you want to change drive icons in Windows, check out the guide that we have published that tells you how to do so. You can download a software to help you with that, or use the Registry to change the drive icons manually.

To change folder icons, use the free Folderico application which lets you do just that. You can use it to change any folder on your system giving it another icon. Last but not least, to change file icons, use Types.

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