How can I change folder icons
(as in windows XP)?

.. . . by creating a shortcut to that folder, then modifying
the properties of the shortcut. When finished, you might
want to fix up your system date/time or Regional Settings -
you're one day ahead of the rest of the world.

Mara <m***@nowhere.com> wrote:
If you want to change the icon as seen in Windows Explorer and other
programs, you can use this procedure:

This is an example using a file (shell32.dll) that is certain to be on
your computer. Following the steps will change a "regular" folder icon
from a plain tan folder icon into a Globe icon. Also included is
information on how to use your own IconFile, since Windows does not ship
with any colored folder icons.

-  Create a New Folder
-  Click Start > Run, type CMD, and in the command windows, type
   attrib +s {FolderName}
    or
   Right-click on the New Folder, choose Properties, in the Attributes
   section click
   Read-only, click Apply, click OK to Apply Changes to this Folder only
-  Right-click in the file list control area of the folder in question and
   choose New > Text Document
-  Double-click New Text Document and add the following three lines:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=C:\WINNT\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=13

-  Choose File > Save As... and in the File name box type the following
   name, with the double-quotes: "desktop.ini"

-  Click Save, and then close desktop.ini. You can delete "New Text
   Document"

-  Refresh Explorer using the F5 key. You may need to do this several
   times before the new icon displays. And if the icon has not changed
   after 4 or 5 refreshes, close all running instances of Explorer,
   and then open Explorer.

To customize the folder icon using your own icon follow these rules to
edit the values in your desktop.ini.

IconFile = The file name that contains the icon to show for the folder. It
can be an ICO or a BMP file, as well as EXE or DLL file that contain
icons. You must use the fully qualified path unless the IconFile is in the
same folder as the desktop.ini file.

IconIndex = The index of the icon in the file just specified. Set it to
zero if you are using an ICO or BMP file. If you are loading the icon from
a file that contains multiple icons, such as EXEs or DLLs, use the ordinal
0-based position of the icon within the file. In the above example, we
used an icon in shell32.dll with an ordinal 0-based position of 13.

For more information on the desktop.ini see:

Customizing Folders with Desktop.ini
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/custom.asp>

Customizing your Computer in Desktop.ini
<http://www.geocities.com/registrylord/desktop.txt>

See tip 3210 in the 'Tips & Tricks' at http://www.jsiinc.com

Jerold Schulman
Windows Server MVP
JSI, Inc.
http://www.jsiinc.com

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