Just booted up, saw my icons are scattered from how I set them up, checked the above Settings/Personalization/Themes/Desktop icon settings and the box is unchecked.
This is not the solution!
Windows 11 Desktop icons rearrange and re-sort themselves
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Anonymous
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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62 answers
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Anonymous
2024-06-02T00:50:24+00:00 -
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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Anonymous
2024-06-03T15:17:00+00:00 Derrick,
Why isn't there a quick fix for something like rearranging problem? Isn't this supposed to be one of the easiest fix you should already have for everyone who is having this stupid issue? I mean come on! Why is this supposed to be so complicated to fix this 1 basic function that we all shouldn't have problem with in the first place?
This is ridiculous!
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Anonymous
2024-06-03T18:14:19+00:00 Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like your IT department is doing its best to mitigate the effect of this annoying bug. On my Windows 11 machine, the issue continues to occur in about 30% of power-ups, and my work-around of deleting the IconCache files and restarting restores the icons 100% of the time. As I offered earlier, I have saved copies of the IconCache file before and after a scatter event and would be happy to provide them to Microsoft.
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Anonymous
2024-06-16T14:44:01+00:00 Even AI can't resolve this problem. This is because machines can't do nothing against human stupidity. Windows 11 is as terrible as years ago Windows 10 was. I'm glad I could upgrade for free but I'm thinking to go back to 10 until they fix all the bugs AND the terrible layout. Microsoft LISTEN what users are saying!