Windows 11 Desktop icons rearrange and re-sort themselves

Anonymous
2023-07-21T01:09:08+00:00

Lately, my Windows desktop icons have periodically and at random rearranged and re-sorted themselves.

It looks like at arbitrary times, This PC and the Recycle Bin, which are traditionally at the top left hand corner of the desktop now shift downwards. The icons re-sort themselves into alphabetical name order. It usually happens after a boot or reboot.

I also have icons spread out randomly over a two-screen desktop. At an arbitrary moment, again associated with a reboot, all icons suddenly snap to the left hand side of the left-hand screen.

There are many posts on the web about the "Autoarrange Icons" and "Align Icons" settings. Changing those settings do not resolve this problem.

This may have something with the ""Sort By" setting. If that is it, the setting does not stay that way for long.

I don't know if this is a new bug that has appeared in a recent build. I use Windows 11 Home, and the current Version is 22H2, and the Build is 22621.1992.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Settings

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-06-03T10:48:31+00:00

    My IT Dept installed a program called "DesktopOK" that saves the position of all your icons and you can restore them. It does work although I didn't really want to install a program just to fix Microsoft's error. I haven't had to use it much recently but sometimes after shutting down completely it will still power on and I suddenly have the problem again. I did right click on the desktop and hit refresh one time when it was scattering my icons (I put them back with DesktopOK but it would still scatter them again as soon as I moved any icon). But clicking refresh seemed to solve it, at least on one or two occasions. But that won't help if you don't know they are going to scatter (which I never do). So a combination of having DesktopOK to put them back and then right click refreshing seems to have worked for me.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-05-21T19:30:28+00:00

    Ooh, I'm going to try this. That would make sense, even though I've never changed my theme.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-04-27T22:38:26+00:00

    I am running Windows 11 and have been seeing this issue on and off for years now. With the latest update (KB5036980), I am seeing the re-arrangement about every third power-up. The IconCache deletion / restart workaround has a 100% success rate restoring the original arrangement.

    If anyone is interested, I have saved two IconCache.db files: one that existed after observing the re-arrangement, and one created after the delete/restart workaround.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-12-01T17:17:49+00:00

    I did have HP installed until recently when I replaced my HP printer with a Canon.

    I haven't seen an icon rearrange lately, but I also rebuilt my OS two weeks ago (for an unrelated reason). That may have also fixed this problem.

    I'll keep watching.

    Thanks for info on the HP software!

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-10-19T15:10:38+00:00

    sorry--it worked for me as I had the same annoying behavior.

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