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Old April 11th 18, 02:50 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
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Default Where are the desktop icon settings stored in 98se?

On Tue, 10 Apr 2018 04:42:25 -0700 (PDT), Lee
wrote:

On Monday, April 9, 2018 at 1:18:50 PM UTC-6, wrote:
Windows 98se

I have a lot of icons on my desktop. Every once and awhile they get all
jumbled up, and it takes me nearly an hour to straighten them up. I have
a specific order I have them so I can find them quickly. I have never
figured how they get messed up and probably never will....

What file and where is the setting for the icons? What I want to do is
just backup that file so I can replace it when the desktop gets messed
up. There is supposedly some setting to lock the desktop, but I have
never found it, and if it does exist, I'd still like to backup whatever
file has the icon settings, just in case!


That data is stored in the registry as encoded information, you can try to save
System.dat and user.dat which are the registry files and attempt to reapply them
in DOS mode, but changes done since the last save for the rest of the machine
means you might have some programs installed anymore.

A better solution was recently discussed just a few post back. If you can't see it
here is the link that provides a fix issued for NT4 but works well for 98 too.
http://stevehealy.org/techblog/?p=162


Ok, if it's in the registry, I can use reg - restore. Since this icon
messup just happens instanntly, I can restore the reg. a lot faster than
I can rearrange all the icons. That way there is little chance of
anything getting messed up unless I just installed some program that
day. I turn the computer off every night, so any changes would just be a
one day event.

Yes, i have copied the reg files too, and restored them from DOS. That
also works.

I am reading that weblink right now (above). It looks like that is more
for XP and Win7, but I have not yet read all of it..

Thanks