Can't move shortcut icons on my desktop to different locations on the desktop

Anonymous
2010-08-17T01:53:34+00:00

I cannot move my desktop shortcut icons around on my desktop.  Think it has something to do with the auto-allign feature - how do I fix this ?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Answer accepted by question author
Ramesh 181.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2010-08-17T04:46:39+00:00

Right-click desktop, click View, and uncheck Auto arrange icons.


Ramesh Srinivasan | The Winhelponline Blog

Microsoft MVP, Windows Desktop Experience

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-03-20T00:02:16+00:00

    Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that hitting escape several times and it worked-- now I can move icons on the desktop and I can once again move files between folders. Thanks!

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-15T06:04:53+00:00

    Me too. ESC x 3 does the trick. Seems the ESC key a number of  odd (not even) times jams something in explorer. Thanks.

    Windows 7 ultimate x64

    Great!its' works!

    thank you

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-27T16:53:09+00:00

    I was having exactly the same problem; on the desktop I ended up hitting escape a few times and I was able to move my icons again.

     As a note this was occurring everywhere in Explorer as I couldn't move icons from one folder to another either.

    Was going crazy as I'd never experienced this before.  Checked all over the place.  Read your

    post and thought "This can't work!"

    Tried it and it worked great!  Unbelieveable!  Happy New Year...

    Me too, Hitting escape three times worked! Windows 8.0 on an HP laptop. I don'tknwo what happened to cause the issue, but now it's fixed.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-01-06T04:11:39+00:00

    Happy to know that one of your issue got resolved.. Now. as u mentioned regarding uninstalling the desktop icon toy, I would suggest you to go through following link and try performing the action mentioned herein, may it would work.

    Following is the link:

    http://www.uninstallsupport.com/uninstallsoftware/uninstall-Desktop-Icon-Toy-4.5-completely.html

    BR

    S Saurabh

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