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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...
I have a high resolution monitor. If The monitor is on before Windows boots, the icons are ok. If the monitor is switched on after Windows has started, the icons are rearranged.
You are correct.
The answer is
tick Auto Arrange,
and untick Align icons to grid.
This is a bug. Because the descriptions should be switch between them.
The tick for auto arrange, actually align new icons to grid.
Whereas, the tick for align icons to grid, actually rearrange the position of icons.
This thread has been around for awhile but I see that it really hasn't been answered to everyone satisfaction. I was looking into this problem a couple of years ago and I was looking for a different answer. What I found a few years ago was that the Windows maintenance in the task scheduler was causing my icons to rearrange for no apparent reason. I went into the Task Scheduler - Task Scheduler Library - Microsoft - Windows - Maintenance and disabled the only task WinSAT. After that, I no longer had the problem. Hope this helps someone.
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