Practicing the Black Art (10/01)
Unique Folder Icons
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
Most of us who use Windows were told that you can not change your boring folder icons. That was true in Windows 95 unless you had the optional Desktop Update feature installed, which became available with Internet Explorer 4.0. Windows 98 has the Desktop Update feature integrated into the operating system. All you need is Notepad, or any other word processor to do the job. The key is in creating or modifying a folder control file called Desktop.ini. You will need a Desktop.ini control file for each boring folder icon you want changed.
The following procedure checks to see if the file has been created and if so, how to modify it to allow you to change the normal yellow folder icon.
To see if Desktop.ini already exists:
- Open the folder whose icon you want to change.
- From the View menu, choose Folder Options.
- Click the View tab.
- Make sure "Show all files" is selected under "Hidden files," and click OK.
- In your open folder, look for a file named Desktop.ini.
The extension won't be visible if you have that option turned off. This file is automatically created any time you customize a folder. For example, Desktop.ini will be created if you add a background picture to a folder, or if you enable Thumbnail View on the folder Properties dialog box.
6. If Desktop.ini exists, double-click it to open it in Notepad. If it doesn't exist skip to step 8.
7. Look for the line [.ShellClassInfo]. Position your mouse cursor at the end of the line and press Enter. Skip to step 10.
8. If you didn't see Desktop.ini, start Notepad.
9. Type [.ShellClassInfo] at the top of the file and press Enter.
10. On the next line, type IconFile= followed by the full path and name of the file containing the icon you want to use.
11. For example, type IconFile=c:\windows\system\ shell32.dll.
12. Press Enter again.
Since some files (such as moricons.dll or the shell32.dll file that comes with Windows) may contain multiple icons, you must indicate which icon you want by specifying its order number in the file. To find out an icon's number, right-click any shortcut and choose Properties. Click the Change Icon button. Type the path to the file that contains the icon you want, or use the Browse button to select it from its folder location. When you see the icons displayed in the Change Icon dialog box, count, starting from zero (the number of the first icon in any file), from top to bottom, left to right. When you get the right number, click Cancel twice and return to Notepad.
13 Then add this line: IconIndex=13. If your file contains a single icon (as is the case with .ico files), leave this setting at 0 or omit the line entirely. The number 13 says to use the 13th icon in the Shell32.dll file.
14. Now choose File, Save. If you started with an empty Notepad window, a dialog box will prompt you for a name and location. Navigate to the folder whose icon you want to change. In the File Name box, type "desktop.ini", including the quotation marks so Notepad won't add its default .txt extension.
15. Click Save.
You're not finished yet. There is still one more step. This method works only with folders that have the attribute that marks a folder as a "system file." To add it:
16. Locate the icon for your folder in Explorer (or on the desktop).
17. Choose Start, Run and type attrib+s. (No spaces)
Leave the Run box open, and drag and drop your folder from Explorer (or the desktop) into the Open box of the Run box.
18. The text should look something like: attrib +s "c:\My Documents" (the path to your folder will, of course, differ).
19. Click OK. A DOS box will flash momentarily on screen as it applies the system attribute to your folder.
20. Finally, select your folder and press F5 to refresh the display.
You should see your new icon. If you used the options in this exercise, your folder's new icon will look like The New Folder Icon.
If you view it in a two-pane Explorer tree, the icon in the left (file tree) pane may not look as it should, but this should be corrected the next time you start Windows. As a final touch, if you created a desktop.ini file, you might want to hide it when hidden files aren't displayed: Right-click the file and choose Properties. Check the Hidden box and click OK. :
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Copyright 2001. This article is from the October 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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