XP desktop icons position problem

[Dave49]

My computer has lost the ability to remember the order in which I place my desktop icons. Whenever my OS refreshes the desktop, or I must reboot, the icons return to some kind of default ordering. The Recycle Bin is even in the lower right corner again, like when XP is freshly installed.

This happened over night one night. My machine runs 24/7. Overnight it scans for viruses, spyware, and does a full system back up. I woke up to the back up program (Acronis) stuck without completing. No programs would load. So I rebooted, and this is the only thing that was messed up, AFAIK. I tried a system restore, actually several of them, with no change in this condition.

I am currently using a program called Icon Restore to deal with the problem.

Dell XPS Gen5 computer.

Can anyone tell me if there is a fix for this condition?

Thanks,

~Dave

[NIM]

Hi Dave,

When you work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, you may experience the problem of unexpectedly changed icons. This is the annoyance of finding the icons on your desktop ngrouped or moved around in some unwanted way. This can happen after:

- a system or program lockup or crash.

- some other person uses your PC and fiddles with your settings - like your

kids, for example.

- change of your screen resolution (800 x 600 to 1024 x 768, etc.)

You may want to try this. Its an experiment at this point, since I'm not experiencing the problem, but no one has found a reliable, workable solution yet.

Click Start, Run and enter REGEDIT. Go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Look for a value called NoSaveSettings in the right pane. If it exists, its value is probably 1. Double click NoSaveSettings and set the value to 0.

If it doesn't exist, right click in the right pane and select New, DWord value and name it NoSaveSettings. The default value for this will be 0.

Log off/log on, or reboot if necessary.

If editing the Registry manually isn't to your liking, you can run script I've attached for you in this post. Double-click the icons.vbs file. You will be notified when the repairs have been completed. You'll need to log off/log on for the changes to take effect.

icons.vbs

Please post your results..

[Dave49]

Thanks, N1K. I did the regedit manually, and nothing changed on reboot. So I then ran your .vbs file thinking I might have done something wrong. Still no joy. So I'm still using the IconRestore program as a work-around. With this program, I can right-click on the desktop and click save. Then upon reboot, or a desktop refresh, I can right-click the desktop and click restore icons and all icons go back to where I put them.

I have posted my problem on other forums, and the only suggestion I got was to use the IconRestore program. This is the first time someone has offered a possible fix for me. Thank you very much.

~Dave

[NIM]

Don't thank me since we haven't solved your problem yet

Ok, as far as I know these settings should be saved in your profile.

So, try to create a new profile and test with it. If that solves your problem there's a chance to fix your current profile also..

In your profile folder there should be user.dat file, not sure if that's the correct name but it should be something like that. If you find that extension is .man instead of .dat, change it to .dat.

You should also check if you have modify permissions on that file so windows can save changes to your profile..

[Dave49]

I have ntuser.dat files all over the place. There must be dozens. (Just did a search on the file name.) There are no .man files that I can find.

~Dave

[NIM]

I have ntuser.dat files all over the place. There must be dozens. (Just did a search on the file name.) There are no .man files that I can find.

~Dave

Can you please create a new profile and check how it goes with it. You may have a profile or even a disk corruption since you have a bunch of ntuser.dat files..

[Dave49]

Can you please create a new profile and check how it goes with it. You may have a profile or even a disk corruption since you have a bunch of ntuser.dat files..

Sorry it took so long to reply. I created a new profile. When I rebooted, I was locked out of Windows. Right at the XP screen where it started loading my personal settings, I got the message that the password had to be reset before login. The trouble is, I never set a password for my system. I wanted my whole family to be able to use it. I also has autologin enabled. So when I got this message, there was nothing I could do. It never gave me the choice of logging in as a different user. So I was completely locked out.

It took me a few hours to restore my system from an 18 hour old backup from an Acronis Rescue CD. Suffice it to say, I'm not comfortable trying that one again.

~Dave

[NIM]

I'm sorry to hear that mate and I really don't understand how did you left locked out of the system because of creating a new profile..

Either you don't have a password or not, you should have been able to login with new created profile account.

I'm glad you fixed this with restore but your system is acting weird mate :confused02:

[Dave49]

I'm sorry to hear that mate and I really don't understand how did you left locked out of the system because of creating a new profile..

Either you don't have a password or not, you should have been able to login with new created profile account.

I'm glad you fixed this with restore but your system is acting weird mate :confused02:

That's right. And I have no idea what's happened to my system. Everything seems to work just fine except the desktop icon reorganization. But now I know something is wrong with the profile as well. Or maybe the profile system is the whole problem.

I'm looking forward to SP3 for XP. I'm hoping that will have enough new fixes to take care of this problem. That is, if Micro$oft ever does release it.

Thanks for trying to help,

~Dave