Set View On Windows Folder Using Desktop.ini

Let’s assume you have turned on your PC and the desktop screen is being displayed. Now there must be certain locations or tools, software that you want to use, and in order to do so, you keep on searching the content in your search box and then go to the required location in the drive to use it. It is a tedious task to find the tool or the software program from the stored locations; rather it would have been easier if they were directly displayed on the Desktop. Then you could you have easily tracked them and click on them when required without going through the laborious tasks of searching them.But many a times, they are not visible properly or maybe they are visible but there icons are not instantly recognizable to your eyes. Thus, if you could change the icons to some user friendly style, easily locatable then it makes your job easier.Here in this article we would discuss about how to change the desktop icons, folder icon and shortcuts icons in Windows 10 and also the situation when you do want to change the icons but are unable to do that due to some restrictions.

1. Free Windows Folder Icons
2. Windows Folder Size

Then, opening the desktop in File Explorer, clicking the View tab, and unchecking the 'Hidden Items' box will cause those pesky desktop.ini files on the desktop to become invisible once again. I have to remember how to do this each time a new Insider Upgrade comes out (it picks up my default setting from File Explorer Options, but doesn't carry.

Method 1: Change Desktop Icons in Windows 10 Using PC SettingsHere in this section, no extra tickling method is used, rather we would prefer to use the pre-installed settings already available in our system to carry out our job in time. Read below to know the steps:Step 1.Press “Windows + I” on the keyboard.Step 2.On pressing the “Windows + I” combination, the “Settings” panel would appear.Step 3.Click on “Personalization” settings.Step 4.Look at the left hand side of the panel, and you would notice a link option named “Change desktop icons”.Step 5.Click on the “Change desktop icons” link.Step 6.On clicking “Change desktop icons” link, a “Desktop icon settings” window would pop up.Step 7.On the new windows that follows, you would get to see certain icons which are already displayed on your screen.

Reading Time: 3 minutesA very common question on this topic is if desktop.ini is a virus or not? First of all, the desktop ini file is created automatically inside every folder. This is a hidden file. So if you choose not to show hidden files in your system settings, it won’t show up. ( Another file similar to desktop ini is thumbs.db file)Just like thumbs.db, desktop.ini files are created automatically inside your computer.

These files are hidden by default. To see desktop.ini files, you need to enable “show hidden files” option under Folder options.

It’s natural to feel uncomfortable when you see the desktop.ini everywhere inside the computer. Even if you try to remove the file, it gets recreated once you close and re-open the folder. What is desktop.ini?Desktop.ini file carries information regarding a folder’s display settings.

Information regarding the icon, the pop-up information that gets displayed when the mouse is moved over a file. It is even possible to edit the desktop.ini file and customize an individual folder. You can find desktop ini files in every folder inside your computer. The only way to reduce the number of these files is to reduce the number of folders inside your computer.Usually, two desktop.ini files are created. One for the administrator account and the other for the local user account.A quick check on my computer and there are over 627 desktop ini files on my computer. These files are usually small and don’t take much space. But at times, you can see a couple of files which is around 5 MB because the folder may have too many files and it needs to carry a lot of information.

So you may ignore it knowing that it is a harmless file. But if you think it is a nuisance and needs to be removed for saving precious hard disk space, try the steps below. How to remove desktop.ini file?There are free tools which can help in removing these files.

But try the simple deletion using the command prompt. Press Windows Key + R for Run window, type cmd for opening command prompt. del /s /ah desktop.iniThis command will quickly remove thumbs.db files from your computer.

How to prevent desktop.ini file from getting recreated?Try the steps below to prevent the desktop.ini file from getting recreated. Press Windows Key + R for Run window, type regedit. This will open the registry editor. On the left side, navigate to HKEYLOCALMACHINE - SOFTWARE - Microsoft - Windows - CurrentVersion - Policies - Explorer. Right click on Explorer folder, click New, click DWORD. Rename the new DWORD to UseDesktopIniCache.

Free Windows Folder Icons

Windows Folder Size

Double click and set the value to 0Use the comment section for any queries or feedback.