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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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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.
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...
Seriously I have tried every option and still whenever I plug into my monitor at home then come to work and plugin into that one, the icons will re-arrange. On top of that if I go to a meeting and disconnect from second monitor and then come back and plug back int icons will move completely to right side. This "feature" should either be fixed or removed completely because it is really broken and has been since XP or before that! I can't believe this got past QA at Microsoft, to me its a huge bug on the main screen of the application!
I agree I would like a button that says "Do not Re-arrange my icons, seriously I mean it!"
I might have found another cause for the problem:
My Desktop folder was not actually located on the same logical hard disk partition as my Windows system. I had it on another partition which is fully encrypted with TrueCrypt (as is my Windows partition).
The Windows partition is decrypted by the TrueCrypt boot loader, the other partition (including the Desktop folder) is automatically mounted by TrueCrypt on windows startup. Since I moved the Desktop folder to my Windows partition again, I have not encountered the problem of rearranged Desktop icons...
I just had this problem on several server versions after the Windows updates this month. I guess that's the same direction as LinusQQ is suggesting.
