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Why do the icons on my desktop get rearranged periodically?

Muse

Muse

Lifer
😱

It drives me nuts. On my Lenovo T60 running XP (will upgrade to Windows 7 HP 32 bit one day, I have the disk, but am not ready), and I have a lot of icons and every few days they are totally reshuffled. It seems random, both in when they are reshuffled and how. WTH is going on?

Edit (11/12/10): I was reading Lenovo documentation on their BIOS updates and came upon the following, which describes this exact problem with T60's with Intel GMA950 graphics, an older Intel driver and in the 19xx machine series (my machine was one of those, and I updated the BIOS and graphics driver and will see if my icons stay put now).
 
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wow thats funny. i've never heard of that. make sure autoarrange is off and align-to-grid is on. also i use tweakui to make "My Computer" the top icon. then they stay where i put them.
 
That used to happen to me from time to time. I think it was either when Windows did an update (certain ones), or if the computer didn't shut down properly. Perhaps you're closing the lid before it actually shuts down and it's somehow going into hibernate, erroring, and rebooting?

Other than that, it might have something to do with the options for sorting the icons by name / type and aligning them to the grid.
 
alyarb said:
wow thats funny. i've never heard of that. make sure autoarrange is off and align-to-grid is on. also i use tweakui to make "My Computer" the top icon. then they stay where i put them.
Click to expand...
I just checked and as I thought, Autoarrange is set to Off and Align-to-grid is set to On.

I don't have TweakUI installed on this machine IIRC, and I don't see signs of it being installed. Maybe installing and configuring it will stop this from happening. :\

Edit: Just checked and My Computer is still my top left icon. That one I don't have to rearrange. My others, I'm going to have to put them pretty much where I expect them... again!
 
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CurseTheSky said:
That used to happen to me from time to time. I think it was either when Windows did an update (certain ones), or if the computer didn't shut down properly. Perhaps you're closing the lid before it actually shuts down and it's somehow going into hibernate, erroring, and rebooting?

Other than that, it might have something to do with the options for sorting the icons by name / type and aligning them to the grid.
Click to expand...

It may be Windows Update doing this. I think it's set to automatically download updates but they don't get installed, I think, until I tell it it's OK to install them.

I don't often shut down this laptop. When I close the lid it goes automatically into Suspend. Awakens when I open the lid. I can go weeks or longer between reboots. Didn't reboot recently. 😕
 
Anything that changes resolution can scramble icons. Years ago, I downloaded and installed this in Xp. It now works perfectly in Vista and Win 7 as well.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/save-and-restore-desktop-icon-layout-in-windows-vista/

Be sure and turn Auto Arrange off. After installing, a right click on a system icon will produce a menu which includes SAVE ICON LAYOUT. When that is done, and if they get scrambled. Right cl;ick and select RESTORE ICON LAYOUT. It works!
 
corkyg said:
Anything that changes resolution can scramble icons. Years ago, I downloaded and installed this in Xp. It now works perfectly in Vista and Win 7 as well.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/save-and-restore-desktop-icon-layout-in-windows-vista/

Be sure and turn Auto Arrange off. After installing, a right click on a system icon will produce a menu which includes SAVE ICON LAYOUT. When that is done, and if they get scrambled. Right cl;ick and select RESTORE ICON LAYOUT. It works!
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Seems like it shouldn't be necessary but I'm tired of finding all my icons scrambled. I have quite a lot (guess over 50) on my Lenovo T60 Desktop. I plan to install Windows 7 on it and that will almost certainly resolve the problem, but in the meantime I'll try this. :awe:

Edit: Um, do they have one for XP? Never did "upgrade" that lappy to Vista...

Edit2: Well, I found this: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-save-your-desktop-icon-layout-in-windows-xp/

I used to use a utility like this in Windows 95, maybe Windows 2000 too. In those days I sometimes changed my resolution and of course, lost my icon layout unless I had saved a previous layout and restored with the utility. However, AFAIK I never change the resolution on this laptop so I have no idea why this is necessary. 😕
 
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Sometimes it happens on a reboot - especially to Safe Mode. Icon Restore works in XP, Vista, and Win 7. A great little utility. I would hate to be without it. Updating a graphics card driver can also move icons around.
 
corkyg said:
Sometimes it happens on a reboot - especially to Safe Mode. Icon Restore works in XP, Vista, and Win 7. A great little utility. I would hate to be without it. Updating a graphics card driver can also move icons around.
Click to expand...
That laptop I've never booted into Safe Mode. Also, have never changed the graphics card driver, at least not to my knowledge. Maybe something's going on in the background automatically, i.e. Lenovo Updates or something. However, this problem happens frequently, and I can't believe for a moment that the graphics driver is updated that frequently. Anyway, I can use the utility but I plan to install Windows 7 soon. I have the software, I just have to take the time to install it, but before doing so I'll want to research what all I want to install in the process. A ton of software and configuration was on the laptop when I got it new and I figure that Lenovo has downloads available in the event that I upgrade to Windows 7 (and Vista, of course, but I never did that, although a free update was available if I paid postage).
 
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corkyg said:
Sometimes it happens on a reboot - especially to Safe Mode. Icon Restore works in XP, Vista, and Win 7. A great little utility. I would hate to be without it. Updating a graphics card driver can also move icons around.
Click to expand...
Hey, CorkyG, I know you have a T60, so this is right up your alley. I was just reading a Lenovo online document (link below) documenting the fixes achieved in the T60 BIOS updates (I upgraded my BIOS for the first time the other day, from version 1.04 IIRC to the latest, from April 2010, version 2.26. In reading the documentation I came upon the one for the first of the 2.x series of updates and it says:

<2.01>
- (Fix) Some versions of the EMM386 mistakenly write a hard drive's MBR area.
It will not boot up after this. (FDISK /MBR may recover it)
- (Fix) Icons on the desktop will be rearranged by a LCD cover close/open action.
1. This problem occurs only on models with a Intel Graphics Media
Accelerator. Machine type is 19xx.
2. Need to upgrade a display driver to version 6.14.10.4693 or later to
fix this problem.


T60, T60p BIOS update document

This is exactly the problem I was having with my T60 and mine IS a 19xx, specifically a 1953-CTO. I also have the Intel GMA950 graphics specific to the problem. I updated my Intel GMA950 graphics driver too, as specified above. Hopefully, problem solved! I would never have guessed that a BIOS upgrade (as well as a video driver upgrade) would solve that problem.
 
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