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
    2010-11-01T19:36:11+00:00

    Rather pathetic.

    It's kind of like having to click "Switch User", then again click "Other User". Duh. (Why would you "switch user" to thesame user???)

    Does MS ever do sanity checks, or QA???

    So far, the solutions seem to be:

    1. Right-click the desktop, select "View" and uncheck "Auto arrange icons"
    2. Right-click the desktop, select "View" and uncheck "Align icons to grid"
    3. Right-click the desktop, select "Refresh"

    These help, but do not solve  the problem. Next step seems to be to download and install the howtogeek.com utility. This also helps, but does not always work how you expect (it seems to be confused between desktop icons on your profile and desktop icons on the "public" profile)

    It is actually worse if you are running Windows 7 in a VM, I have noticed.

    Hey Microsoft, are you listening?

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-09-16T13:34:20+00:00

    Hi, dimglow.

    Right-click on Desktop, choose View.

    RC

    "dimglow" wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

    where do I find autoarrange


    R. C. White, CPA Microsoft Windows MVP

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-09-16T11:07:40+00:00

    where do I find autoarrange

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-09-15T15:46:44+00:00

    I've had this very annoying issue with XP for years (my company is just starting to upgrade.)  I'm hoping that when I get Win7 next week one oif these solutions will fix the problem, since I have no choice over OS selection.

    In the meantime, you might switch to OS X.  I have never had this problem on my Macs. :-)

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