Windows 7 desktop icons keep rearranging themselves

Anonymous

Every few days, all the icons on my Win7 desktop rearrange themselves. Usually they move to the left edge of the screen. I laboriously move all the icons back to where I like them, and 3-10 days later, they all shift left again. I've found no pattern or event that might cause this -- but it's very annoying!

I've got Win7 build 7100 running on a Dell Latitude D830 laptop. Totally standard hardware and very little non-Microsoft software. In short, it's a pretty clean system.

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Anonymous

To supplement Reyas.M.I.'s answer, Under View is the option to select the icon size, Auto arrange icons and Align icons to grid. The Sort by option includes Name, Size, Item type and Date modified. I suggest you check both View and Sort by.

Corrine, Microsoft MVP (Consumer Security). This posting is provided "AS IS" without warranty, and confers no rights.

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Anonymous

Check whether "Auto Arrange" checked. To check this, right click on desktop and select "Arrange icons by".

I hope this helps.

Thanks and Regards, Reyas...

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162 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-10-16T17:50:49+00:00

Greg A: I use my laptop as a laptop, then switch to a big screen monitor, so it gets moved about regularly. So it has to handle different screen resolutions. The icons get moved about all the time.

So I use Iconoid from SillySot Software. It has worked for me every time. Any time I change the screen layout, I start Iconoid and store the positions. Then if they get mis-configured, Iconoid is my friend. Iconoid is a little quirky, for example, the Save/Restore positions is on the third tab, but otherwise it does the job.
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Anonymous

2015-10-16T17:11:07+00:00

not discussed in this thread - but may be relevant...

at my office computer, i manually moved all icons to where i would like them to be.

if i remain only accessing that pc by physically sitting at that computer - and otherwise NOT changing my screen resolution settings. my icons will remain where i leave them (and have done so for years).

now, when i need to REMOTELY access that same computer via RDP, using a 2nd computer that does NOT have the exact same screen resolution - guess what... the moment that RDP session begins, due to the screen resolutions NOT matching, the icons get repositioned. not only are they repositioned during that RDP session... but when i then go back to the office, the icons are no longer where i originally put them.

in addition, to answer another users question 'can i force my icons to maintain their position?'

dont think windows has this feature 'built-in' but there are 3rd party utilities, such as 'DesktopOK' that can do this. ive never used one of these, so cant recommend one.
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Anonymous

2015-10-07T13:28:24+00:00
When I updated my computers (Dell and Lenovo) to Windows 10 I had the same problem - after every restart icon wandered to the left side of the desktop. For each computer solution to the problem was different:

DELL - download the latest drivers for the Intel card from the card manufacturer solved the problem.

Lenovo - here the above solution is not worked. After a long time I ran into another solution:
1. Start the registry editor (Start-> Run regedit)
2. Navigate to the key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop]
3. Change the name of the key Desktop (for example: OldDesktop)
4. Reboot
After that the problem goes away.
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