Nice small utility for Desktop icons

Ever had that horrible situation where you've arranged your icons all nice on the desktop then lost their positions? Happens randomly or when changing screen resolutions yes?

It's so annoying and I can't believe a recover option has never been added to the Windows context menu. In the past, I've used Iconian - but it's memory resident and too heavy for what I want - a very simple icon position recovery tool.

Found this today and it does exactly what I want:

http://www.midiox.com/desktoprestore.htm

Such a simple addition to the context menu, but SOOOOO essential! :D Love it!

very handy indeed!

tx

I had plenty of those silly situations, but personally I hate installing all those tiny little apps just to do one single task.
I just reorganized the way I store my fav prog's shortcuts and first put them into the Start menu, but that was a long and painful way to check some, so I created a different [backup] folder containing all the icons and created a toolbar shortcut to them on my taskbar.
Now all it takes are two clicks to run most of my favorite proggies and I don't have to go back to my desktop to search for that huge icon.

It's a shame that Windows doesn't have "Snapshot" and "Unsnapshot" that Amiga Workbench had ;)

Haha, yeah, ain't it the truth ;)
We probably all learned it the hard way when we lost our precisly pix-perfect set icons ;)

My desktop regulaly gets changed after changing screen resolutions, so I installed the app.

Thanks :)

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Originally Posted by Shoonay

I had plenty of those silly situations, but personally I hate installing all those tiny little apps just to do one single task.

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I agree - that's why I was happy to find this over the memory resident app Iconian. All this does is add three extra entires to your desktop context menu and writes the results to the registry, like all other windows settings in control panel for example. It's not memory resident or an application at all. Just a small extension that seemlessly integrates into Windows.

You do seem to have a good system that works for you anyway, so it probably won't be of use. I think it's great! :D

Always useful to have such a utility as it is annoying when they all move around with resolution changes.

However I use a program called UltraMON which has this feature built in. If you don't know what this program is, it is designed to multi-monitor setups so you can configure how the tool bar works on each of the screens, how the background image is displayed across them all, and other things like controlling each monitors resolution. It is agreat utility that I highly recommend for all those with 2 monitors.

I tend to put on quick launch my really everyday apps, about 7, but quick launch is compressed only to show 3 icons in a way to maximise space. Then i create desktop folders to put the shortcuts in. The motive of doing this was precisely what Bloodwych said because of icons getting all messed up and lately a good way of having everything organized.

I'm also picky about having unnecessary tools running in the background. But this tool is indeed a good find for anyone relying on 'everything on the desktop'. :thumbs:

Yeah, I use the quick launch bar too and "Total Commander" mainly for launching rather than explorer. I still like to have a few icons on my desktop however and it's nice to "snapshot" them as woody mentioned.

I hate loads of icons on the desktop. Like to keep it to a minimum if possible with just Computer, Network and Recycle Bin on there all of the time, and then I put other files and folders on the desktop while I'm working with them, and then move them into another drive when finished.

My wife's laptop's desktop is a complete mess though. When I use it I can't find anything on there. The whole desktop is filled with icons from everything she has installed. But she seems to like it that way. Quite funny when she has installed something new then has to spend a couple of minutes hunting for the new icon! :lol:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I hate loads of icons on the desktop. Like to keep it to a minimum if possible [...]

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Yup, same here.

I always feel sorry for all those poor computers my friends have... you click on the Start button and can see 823764827364 different shortcuts to programs, you look at the desktop and see 817236 different icons... sad.

I remember one guy posting once a screenshot of his desktop on some forums and asking for help if anyone could find his school project, lol

:lol: That is funny.

Start menus are also a nightmare on most PCs that is true. Most people don't seem to understand that you can rearrange and change what is in the start menu. The first thing I do is create some sub folders for Games, Applications and Utilities, and then they can all be files away for easy finding.

Startmenu spam and desktop spam are one of the disaster areas of Windows. Another strange thing that has never been addressed.

Program writers just dump stuff all over the place and if you move it around you can't uninstall without tidying up the shortcuts too as the uninstaller can't find them.

Some programs use folders; some don't; some have massively long names that expand the startmenu half way across the screen......UGH! Messy, messy messy.

As you guys have said however - most people just don't care and can live with the chaos!

Or in most cases, they just don't realise these things can be altered and changed.

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Originally Posted by Bloodwych

as the uninstaller can't find them.

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Just a note about an awesome and free tool that indeed works to uninstall programs! I'm using it during the last year and it do wonders on this matter:

http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Wow, thanks xpect I've never seen that before. Looks like a great tool!

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Originally Posted by xpect

http://www.revouninstaller.com/

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64 bit operating systems are NOT supported!

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:nuts:

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Originally Posted by Shoonay

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Originally Posted by xpect

http://www.revouninstaller.com/

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64 bit operating systems are NOT supported!

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:nuts:

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Yes and I wonder how it installed in Windows XP x64... Even moar :nuts:

lol, really? alrighty then i'll try it :]

seems to work, i guess, now to wait a few months... ;)

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Originally Posted by Shoonay

I remember one guy posting once a screenshot of his desktop on some forums and asking for help if anyone could find his school project, lol

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lol :D

how many icons did he have?

My Start > Programmes has a very long list and always has done. I use it to store everything as I only tend to use the Desktop or Quick launch.

the whole desktop was covered with icons and it was something around 1024x768 which was pretty much for that time (i used 800x600). of course, surely he was just joking, but iirc the thread was about how way too clean some people keep there xp's, without any useless icons, without even the background picture. So the guy showed how a desktop should look like, lol

oh, you guys remember some other movie on youtube when a guy uses the win's desktop assistance mode where someone else can take over your PC and do whatever he wants?
well, he requested his assistant to help him with something (can't remember what it was) and the other guy totally "broke" all his desktops icons, lol, hilarious that one was, if I could only remember how was it called..

I remember when I first got a Windows PC.
I wondered where 'Ram Disk', 'System' and 'Work' were :lol:

I remember really missing the Ram disk when I first used Windows as well. Obviously if thinking about it logically you don't need a ram disk when you have a large HDD sitting there, although it can still be of use I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I remember really missing the Ram disk when I first used Windows as well. Obviously if thinking about it logically you don't need a ram disk when you have a large HDD sitting there, although it can still be of use I suppose.

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What got me when I first used a PC was, the drive letters!?!
I was used to DF0: and DH0:, not A: and C:

Also the fact that Windows is still restricted to just 26 lettered devices and you cannot change the name of them. On the Amiga you didn't have to called the HD DH0:, you could just as easily call it GC0: if you so wished.

Some might argue that you won't ever need 26 devices at any one time. However consider if you had 4 drives in your system, each with a couple of partitions. That instantly uses up 8 of them. Then A and B are reserved for floppy drives so are lost. And if you connected a multi card ready you could lose up to another 4. That is 14 of the 26 already used up leaving just 12. You can then map some network drives that use up even more letters, and what about plugging an MP3 player, USB stick, camera or external HDD in. Each using letters up. I could easily use them all up if I tried.

The PC does still have some restrictions that date back to its origins and only still exist for legacy compatibility. Linux doesn't use such restrictions on device naming, so why can't Windows be updated for a better system?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Some might argue that you won't ever need 26 devices at any one time. However consider if you had 4 drives in your system, each with a couple of partitions. That instantly uses up 8 of them. Then A and B are reserved for floppy drives so are lost. And if you connected a multi card ready you could lose up to another 4. That is 14 of the 26 already used up leaving just 12. You can then map some network drives that use up even more letters, and what about plugging an MP3 player, USB stick, camera or external HDD in. Each using letters up. I could easily use them all up if I tried.

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My main PC is using all the drive letters possible! :mad:

A: and B: are lost
C: & D: - partitions on the first hard drive
E: & F: - partitions on the second hard drive
G: - DVD-RW drive
H: - K: - internal card reader
K: - card reader in my printer!
L: - external USB hard drive
M: - MP3 player
N: - Z: - mapped network drives!

OH MY GOD!
Whenever I open 'Windows Explorer' or 'My Computer', it's a complete mess!

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I remember really missing the Ram disk when I first used Windows as well. Obviously if thinking about it logically you don't need a ram disk when you have a large HDD sitting there, although it can still be of use I suppose.

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I could have done with a RAM disk the other day and started to wonder 'why doesn't Windows have a RAM disk?'

For what?

And you can get third party utilities to setup and run a ram disk from Windows. Take a look at http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=131 for an interesting guide.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

For what?

And you can get third party utilities to setup and run a ram disk from Windows. Take a look at http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=131 for an interesting guide.

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Playing a large video file off a USB digital camera without copying it to the hard drive.

But couldn't you just play it directly via the USB connection? USB2 is 480Mbits which is more than fast enough to stream video.

Yes, but USB was too slow to play the video directly. It played fine off the HD though and is now stored on a DVD which I managed to make after half an hours worth of fiddling with DVD Studio Pro.