How can I lock desktop icons?

If you your icons are still moving after you have checked 'lock icons in place' and unchecked 'auto arrange', it is possible your computer is infected with malware. My icon mobility issue was caused by Trojans.

I would advise that, before trying the other remedies on this thread, you run a check for malware.

I use and recommend the free Malwarebytes anti-Malware.

Run it and remove any malware, then rearrange your icons as you want them and reboot.

I hope this proves useful to someone, as I know from personal experience how frustrating the problem is.

In my opinion Microsoft should prioritize the development of a more effective anti-malware system than the one they currently offer.

Thank you micromax1227. It worked for me too! Yeah, kudos!

There are plenty of similar utilities, some of them (all free), could work better or add extra features. Just a few ones I picked up while surfing: Iconoid, Icon Restore, Desktop Restore, Stardok Fences.

People, enjoy the one you want! This always works! Especially when you temporarily change your screen resolution or a program does it for you (and you can't prevent it)

Cheers from France

At first, I believed it was working when resolution is changed temporarily (during boot process for me) before getting  back to its prior setting. Keeping the same resolution is mandatory because of it would not be possible to redesign the icon to match the same size on screen.

But securityguy14's trick does not actually work under Vista when resolution is temporarily changed. Maybe it would under XP. My double ATI/Intel video card does switch resolution when booting until I have logged in and this reorganizes the icons making them aligned to the left, whatever are the options for alignment to the grid (ON by default) and auto-arrangement (OFF by default).

My only working option is to use a utility like IconRestorer or Iconoid to restore a backed-up layout of my deskop at boot (automatically).

Hope this helps

Hi, a quite old topic but this issue keeps on bothering people like me...

It's the first time I was facing it over 15 years and your solution did work for me but with some arrangements, according to technical details found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc962680.aspx

This Registry value seems to have been designed for Windows 2000 system and the related data can have the following possible values: 0 for saving settings or 1 for NOT saving settings.

Creating this value with a data value equal to 1 did work for me, according to TechNet. This works in my own environment (Windows Vista SP2) and for my specific case having my display resolution changing at boot (800x600) till I log in and the system recovers to 1680*1050. This weird graphical behavior could be OK "by design" for my swichable ATI Mobility / Intel GMA card feature (laptop Lenovo ThinkPad W500).

I did create two Registry values manually (see  below), as the import of your .reg file did not create the value in my Registry, even after cleaning the extra spaces as mentioned else where.

Finally, the Registry export in my case is the following, slightly diffrent from yours:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]

“NoSaveSettings”==dword:000000001

As I was not sure about precedence for HKLM and HKCU hives, I did also create the same value for the HKLM hive. I can't say if both are mandatory or only one would do the trick (HKLM for for all users or HKCU for my account only?). I felt too lazy to manage some tests.

I hope it could help people who were still facing this annoying issue after applying your straight solution. Despite my quite poor English.

Cheers from France