Windows 7 desktop icon's keep moving

Anonymous
2009-10-24T13:28:57+00:00

Hi there, I have re-arranged my desktop and moved the task bar to the left side of the screen. Therefore I have moved my desktop icons and my gadgets over to the right side of the screen and lined them up in order to what they are, (ie: MS Office icons in one row, excel files I use on a regular basis, Adobe program and so-on and so-on). Everytime I re-boot my PC about 2/3rds of the icons keep moving back over to the left side of the screen and arrange from top to bottom.

I have checked and un-checked align icons by grid and it makes no difference.

I didn't have this issue in VISTA but when I installed Windows 7 I have this issue.

Any suggestions here on how I can stop the icons from moving??

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2009-11-08T14:51:55+00:00

Had the same problem. Please go to this link, there are separate programs for 32 & 64 bit Windows (I have 64 bit, that works fine, cannot know about the 32 bit, but....):

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/save-and-restore-desktop-icon-layout-in-windows-vista/

Al;though designed for Vista, it is fine with Windows 7 Ultimate. Might do for XP, haven't needed to use it there.

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-11-02T10:52:15+00:00

    Thank you for visiting the Microsoft Windows Community site. In an effort to focus more attention on your particular situation, create a new thread. This will mitigate confusion caused by more than one posting about similar topics, allowing us to focus on each customer individually

    Thank you for visiting the Microsoft Windows Community site.

    Create your new thread here

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-11-09T18:50:33+00:00

    I had this problem w/Windows 7-32Bit and found that if I right-clicked on desktop and then clicked "Refresh" the icons stayed in place after a reboot. You'll have to do that anytime you add/move icons to keep them 'locked' in place. Cheers.

    I tried the refresh suggestion and it didn't work for me.  Most likely because I also use a docking station and different external monitors at work and home.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-11-14T17:51:14+00:00

    HEY I MIGHT HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU IT WORKED FOR ME AND IT IS  STILL WORKING FOR ME.........

    1-MOVE YOUR ICONS WERE YOU WANT

    2-RIGHT CLICK ON DESKTOP

    3-SCROLL TO VIEW

    4-TURN OFF BOTH "ALIGN ICONS BY GRID" AND "AUTO ARRANGE ICONS"

    5-THEN HIT YOUR REFRESH BUTTON

    6- RESTART YOUR COMPUTER

    6-ICONS SHOULD BE AT THE SAME LOCATION

    I HAVE NOT AFTER MY FIRST REFRESH HAD TO REFRESH AGAIN MY ICONS HAVE ALWAYS STAYED IN THE SAME POSITION

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-11-30T21:49:47+00:00

    It appears that there are a million solutions to this problem - none of them worked for me.  What DID work was trashing my graphics card that used the ATI radeon chipset and replacing it with one that uses a Nvidia chipset.  That was the end of the "wandering icons" problem.  I believe that there was something in the fact that I have two monitors of different resolutions that the ATI software (drivers?) just couldn't deal with.  With the old graphics card, the second monitor was nearly always set to the incorrect resolution and that's when the icons were moved, even though the monitor with the icons had the correct resolution.

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