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

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-10-27T21:02:49+00:00

    This is nothing more than a sales posting. What utter ****.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-27T21:04:46+00:00

    We have a WINNER!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-03T13:29:44+00:00

    I have to ask, has anyone ever done this and it resolves the issue? I have been working in IT for over 25 year and this has NEVER worked to fix anything.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-03T13:52:55+00:00

    Rich, doesn't work. Absolutely NOTHING has fixed the issue in Windows 11 for me. I come into work once or twice a week to my icons being completely scattered.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-12-03T19:57:28+00:00

    I gave up on all these online solutions because none worked for me, and someone had recommended a program called desktopOK, and I installed it and moved my icons to where I want them to be and created a icon arrangement profile. Now when they get rearranged I just hit the restore button in desktopOK and the icons move back to where they're supposed to be.

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