How To Change Drive Icons In Windows

Windows users have two manual options to change the drive icons in the operating system. The first option makes use of an autorun.inf file placed in the root directory of the drive. The best way to create the file is to create a standard text document and rename it. It is then necessary to paste the following two lines of code in the text document, and change the path to the icon location on the hard drive.

[autorun]
ICON=path

This method is not that practicable especially for optical drives. The second available option is to configure the drive icons for all drives in the Windows Registry. Users need to navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\driveicons\

Driveicons may not exist by default. If that is the case create the key by right-clicking on Explorer and selecting New > Key and naming it driveicons.

It is then necessary to create another subkey that is named like the drive letter of the drive that should get a new icon. The path to the icon needs to be added as the value of the default parameter of the key.

Windows Drive Icon Changer

Many users may prefer a software to change the drive icons in the operating system. 7DriveIconsChanger is one of the applications for that task. The free portable software can change drive icons in all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The following steps need to be completed to change the icon of a drive or icons of multiple drives.

• The program may need to be started with administrative rights
• Select a drive letter, this will be the drive the icon will be changed for.
• Click Browse Icon to select an icon on the local system.
• Click Apply Icon to apply the icon to the drive

It is possible to restore default icons at any time by selecting a drive letter and clicking on Restore Default Icon.