Desktop Icon Location Restore

[z]

I need to run presentations on an overhead, which forces me to switch to a
lower screen resolution. This moves my desktop icons around and when I go
back to my preferred higher resolution I have to drag my icons back to where
I like them.

Is there an application out there somewhere that would store the locations
and recall them?

z

 

[Ray Costanzo [MVP]]

Not this is an answer to the exact question, but how about creating a
new profile for presentation purposes. As long as you change the
resolution and then change it back all while in the new profile and
never load your usual profile, I believe that your icon placement
will be unaffected.

Ray at work

 

[George Hester]

Yes. It is called layout and is on the Windows NT 4 Workstation Resouce Kit.

 

[z]

Can that safely be used on Windows 2000?

z

Yes. It is called layout and is on the Windows NT 4 Workstation Resouce
Kit.

 

[George Hester]

Oh sure. What is it really? Its just a dll and it is NOT self-registering. It is in all likelihood a C++ dll. You
have to register it with an included reg file. So you see there is really nothing to it that could cause
imcompatibility. It is truly stand alone. Here is the reg file which installs it:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{19F500E0-9964-11cf-B63D-08002B317C03}]
@="Desktop Icon Layout"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{19F500E0-9964-11cf-B63D-08002B317C03}\InProcServer32]
@="Layout.dll"
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\IconLayout]
@="{19F500E0-9964-11cf-B63D-08002B317C03}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved]
"{19F500E0-9964-11cf-B63D-08002B317C03}"="Desktop Icon Layout"

That's it. It's a basic shell extension. If it didn'r work you could just remove these entries. But it's fine don't let NT 4 disuade you.