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Application Notes 1


Section Contents

Changing Desktop Icons
Drives  |  Folders  |  Files  |  Shortcuts  |  System


Drives
  1. It is possible to change the icon for the hard disk drives on a Windows 95 and Windows 98 system by creating a file called c:\autorun.inf and putting the following two lines into this file.

    [AUTORUN]
    ICON=c:\ICONS\SAMPLE_ICON.ICO

  2. You should create a folder called C:\ICONS to store the icon you will use. I have assumed in this example that the icon has been called SAMPLE_ICON.ICO

  3. I have not managed to make this work under Windows 2000 or Windows ME. I have not yet tried to make it work under Windows XP.


... Another method ...

  1. There is an alternate method which does work with Win98/2K/ME but not with XP. You will need to edit your Windows Registry with this method. Always back up your registry before making any changes to it.

  2. In the registry, you can apply different icons to seperate floppy drives, CDROM drives and hard drives with some simple registry keys (Win 98 or above is needed). To do so create/edit this registry key...

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
    CurrentVersion\explorer\DriveIcons

  3. Under this key, create/edit news keys with only the drive letter as their name. For example...

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
    CurrentVersion\explorer\DriveIcons\C

  4. Under each drive letter key, create another key called "DefaultIcon".

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
    CurrentVersion\explorer\DriveIcons\C\DefaultIcon

    Registry Editor

  5. Decide which icon you want to use. For this example I chose the third icon in the 256 color collection that comes with the shareware version of Icon Library.

    Icon Library Display

  6. Double click on the word Default in the right part of the window and change the string (value not set) to point to the full path of your icon. Add a comma and number when the icon is in an .icl file. The first icon is 0.

    Edit Registry String

  7. Click the OK button and you should now see the path set as the default value for the drive.

    New Registry String

    Note that if there's an autorun.inf present in the root path of the drive, any icon specified there may be displayed instead.

  8. You will have to reboot Windows for the new icon to be visible. Once you have rebooted, you should see the new disk drive icon as shown for the HD_2 drive in this example.

    New Drive Icon

  9. DefaultIcon settings do not seem to work with Windows XP.

  10. Floppy disks, ZIP disks and other removable media can also have their own icons added using this method.

  11. DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any system crash you have after you edit your registry. BACK IT UP FIRST.

  12. You can now try changing the icons for some of your Folders.

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