Does anyone know why Windows sometimes decides to move your desktop icons around? I know that if you change screen resolutions it'll shift them, but sometimes it seems to do it spontaneously, and reorder them seemingly randomly.

Actually, I don't really care that much why as long as I can figure out how to make it stop. I have a user that has this happen to him multiple times a day.

Does he have auto-arrange on or off? What version of Windows?

Bugs the crap out of me, too.

Having it happen *spontaneously* must be due to some third party program making it happen. Or maybe it's a remote desktop connection taking over his screen.

I've seen it happen each time you attach/detach a second monitor (such as when you dock/undock your laptop).

But if you just want to save and restore their layout, there's a little DLL utility from the resource kit that saves and restores your desktop icon layout. Just rightclick on "My Computer" or "Recycle Bin" or any of those kinds of icons and say SAVE DESKTOP ICON LAYOUT or some such. Very useful. Works on Win2k, XP, and Vista. Not sure about Srv2003. Also: I think it only works on 32-bit platforms. But anyway, if you want it, search for it or I can supply.

It's not auto-arrange. XP Pro.

One time he could identify something that looked like it triggered the rearranging was installing MS Project.

The things I've seen re-arrange icons:

1) Back in the Windows 95/98 days, a Windows crash (whole machine) would often reset their position and they'd end up in alphabetical order

2) Windows XP auto-arrange (as mentioned)

3) Remote desktop to the machine in full screen from a machine with a different resolution (lower)

Are they all moving, or just one or two? In to alphabetically (or some sorted) order? You say randomly - how random?

Have you seen it yourself? I'd almost say operator error perhaps?

My XP machine has stacks of stuff on the desktop. I have align to grid but not auto-arrange on. It never moves the icons. The only time I do have trouble is with full screen remote desktop which also changes things like the refresh rate which I have to change back when I use the machine normally.

I too have seen my desktop get whanged when a corporate snoop admin connected.

Another thing which can do it - I only notice this on my main gaming machine - is if I am in some app with different full screen res (eg Half Life 2 which I take down to 1400 by 900 res for extra speed) and I pop out to another app to answer email or something all the icons outside that 1400 by 900 window get pushed up to the top left. In no particular order.

It is a PITA so I am going to grab that reskit app Tony mentioned!

If you've got multiple monitors and a copy of UltraMon, it can save/restore icon locations, but if you don't have multiple monitors, don't bother buying it for that one feature.

If you _do_ have multiple monitors, you owe it to yourself to get a copy.

Yeah. What he said.

UltraMon is all the stuff that should have been in Windows to start with when they started supporting multiple monitors. In fact...I'm not sure why MS didn't add all those features into Vista and put UltraMon out of business. They seem to do that with everyone else.

My Windows 2000 machine at work randomly disappears an reappears the My Computer, Recycle Bin, and Network Neighborhood icons. The changes are triggered when I save something to the desktop; one of said icons disappears and is replaced by what I saved. Eventually, another addition/removal of desktop items will make the icon reappear.

I probably hurt the machine from always testing and experimenting on it. But still annoying.

On my work Windows XP machines, deployed via Ghost, the very specific arrangement of icons would be reset to alphabetical order. This only happened once, when booting on the user's 1280x1024 LCD after having finalized the Ghosted image on a 1024x768 LCD. I work around it by setting the resolution to 1280x1024 while still on the 15" LCD before deploying it.

Not that either of these are relevant, but maybe someone else will be curious about desktop icon rearranging. After the aforementioned Win98 rearrange-upon-crash burning me constantly, I gave up on desktop icons all together.

In case anyone is interested, after four years, there is a new version of UltraMon that supports Vista and 7.

This is just one of the many features of Windows.

I don't think I've ever had this happen (on the desktop) with my copies of Windows XP unless I've switched resolutions. Then again, I don't keep too many icons on the desktop and I don't find myself using the Windows machines very much. But I did use one as a primary machine at work a few years ago and don't recall this "random" behavior (Win2K then XP).

MS hasn't improved anything since WinXP. Vista and 7 are pretty much exactly the same except for some new lipstick on the same old pig. In fact I was blown away the other day at how crap 7 was - gleaned in only 10 minutes, I have no plans to ever use it again. It's as if MS has only managed to add more layers of useless complexity to every part of the OS. They're going backwards.

Wow, I'm so impressed at how short a time you spent with it. That really makes me put a lot of weight in what you say.

Whatever. I'm loving 7, and it's quite different from XP - in a good way. In my work I deal with many Vista installations, and while it's better than it used to be, I can still tell that 7 is better.

That entire tirade is completely baffling and pretty much goes against everything everybody is saying about Windows 7.

What'd you expect...?

Stig

I'd argue that anyone that claims Windows 7 is drastically different than XP is simply being mesmerized by the additional gloss.

Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 was a huge difference. Not much of a fundamental nature has changed in the day to day aspects of Windows for the user. I've spent about 10 minutes with 7 but a lot longer with Vista (which I'm trying to forget still to this day).

I initially thought Bitt was describing a W7 problem BTW. Quickly, I found that sharing and networking are as horrible with W7 as they are with XP. Vista and yes, even W7, are pretty much design masturbation on MS' part. They're not actually fixing any problems, while creating plenty of new ones. Apple has some of these elements in its latest releases too, but for the most part the OS moves forward. The friend who's computer I was using on the weekend can't stand W7 and the only reason it's on their machine is because the machine came with it when procured by their IT department (who also manages all admin duties on these machines).

I'll stick with XP - where my Icons don't jump around.

I've occasionally wished I was delusional. It looks like so much fun.

Me too, then I'd probably never realize that Windows Vista/7 had an almost 10 year development cycle with barely anything to show for it.

My post was made in December 2007: over two years ago. How would it have been about Windows 7?

I was specifically referring to WinXP.

That said, while a lot of the changes in Windows 7 are just window dressing, some of that window dressing does seem to make it more usable. The search feature inside the control panel comes to mind. Certainly many of the backwards steps with Vista have been revamped. The constant approval process is the most obvious.

I haven't really used 7 all that much, and I was initially irritated by some of the modifications (and remain so about some of those, specifically the taskbar, which wastes a huge amount of space), but, all in all, I think it's definitely an improvement over Vista, and at the very least, not worse than XP.

Can you imagine if I stopped to look at the date of every post? I didn't notice it was a thread brought back from the grave. In this case I didn't look at the date of any post. Oops.

At least they took some of my advice, even if it was only my advice on which good architectural ideas to copy from Apple.

Peter

They do all the time even in XP as well, usually triggered by a resolution change. This includes logging in via remote desktop, or installing new video drivers that briefly dump the desktop down to VGA mode. That behavior was one big reason why I stopped relying on the desktop for file/icon storage beyond temporary files.

As for Windows 7, the overall press is indeed positive, since it did manage to be better then Vista, though thats not saying much. For me looking at it as a developer, it's still pretty crappy though, and worse then XP in a lot of cases. The only big benefit I see with Vista/7 is that it might finally start moving the Windows platform to 64 bit. Outside of that, UAC is still there mucking things up for programs with broken behavior. (To the point where a lot of programs are installing in the Users folder now to avoid the problems). Windows Side by Side is still there making DLL hell worse then it used to be. DirectX updates and MS C++ runtimes are still not distributed by Microsoft/Windows update, however Silverlight is.

The XP mode would have been really handy as a way for Microsoft to box up the past legacy crap and move forward cleanly. Problem is, it's only part of Professional and above, requires specific hardware support, and doesn't even ship on the DVD. It's really clear Microsoft's focus is not on the consumer market, but instead on the enterprise market where they get to charge a small fortune for a desktop system. (Windows client + Office + Windows server + Exchange licenses).

Or hooking up to a projector. Or sometimes just randomly when Explorer crashes.

FWIW, I ended up installing DesktopOK. I'm not running Windows anymore, though, thank God.

I'm using Desktop Restore.
I have two configurations saved- one for my laptop on the desk (with extension onto a monitor) and one for the laptop standing alone.

And as a follow-up to my first reply in this thread: The "Save Desktop Icon Layout" dll from the (very old - perhaps 2000?) Windows Resource Kit still works, and works correctly, in Windows 7. It's essentially the same thing as DesktopOK.

Regarding Windows 7: I agree that it's just more window dressing on the same old OS. But I will say that it seems to be slightly better about preserving desktop icon layouts than XP was. In XP, if I logged in remotely with a smaller-resolution computer, the icons would still be rearranged to the smaller resolution when I logged in locally again. With Windows 7, when I log in locally, the icons are still in the larger resolution layout, just the way I left them.

Yeah, I often see those icon issues when those things happen on my Windows machines. It doesn't bother me too much, though, as I try to keep a pretty clean desktop. The only items are the very essential or the very temporary. The former can easily be put back in place, as it's only a few icons. With the latter, well, it doesn't matter.

heh- reminds me of that oldie-but-goodie
http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
Salesguy vs Webdude

"There's no 'order by penis'"

Oh my goodness, I made it through that whole first video, but it was painful. Only ever so slightly exaggerated from real help desk life. SOOO happy I'm not doing that anymore.