In message , VanguardLH
writes:
Archer wrote:

When I start Windows 7 (32 bit) the desktop icons appear llarge and
are auto arranged eventhough I normally use small icons and arrange
them in a particluar way.

But every time I restart Windows auto arranged large icons appear on
desktop.

Right-click on the desktop, select View, pick what you want for options
regarding icon size and auto-arrange.

Thanks for that! So obvious. I'd been wondering why changing the size of
"Icon" (right-click on [empty part of] desktop, Personalize, Window
Color [!], Advanced appearance settings... [that last step only
necessary if you're using an Aero theme]) didn't work. It's obviously an
oversight that that parameter was left in the list there!

Looks like you've only got a choice of three sizes - Large, Medium, and
Small. (Fair enough, otherwise designers would have to spend all their
time making icons for different sizes, and whatever file contained them
would be huge.)

If you _do_ find your icons are getting moved anyway (this seems to have
been an intermittent problem since Windows 95, with assorted causes), I
know of three third-party solutions that fix it, in different ways:

EZdesk, by Melissa Nguyen. Only included for completeness, as
unfortunately it seems _not_ to work in Windows 7 (32 or 64); it did
from '9x to XP (I don't know about Vista). Trialware, though works for
ever without nags; I did try to actually pay, but I think the author has
long abandoned it (home website no longer works, but available from
various sources, some dodgier than others).

Iconoid, from http://www.sillysot.com/; 2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10. Reasonably
simple to use for saving icon positions, though can do lots more with
icons (including hiding them all to give a clean view of your chosen
wallpaper; disconcerting if you select that option without realising!).
Freeware (donations accepted). I've found it intercepts capital A, but
only after a while, and I think that's probably to do with other
keyboard problems peculiar to me.

DesktopOK: https://www.softwareok.com/?Download=DesktopOK - 98 to 10.
Freeware (I can't see a donate button either). Has the ability to save
layouts as actual files, rather than just in the registry as (I think)
the others do.

All three can save layouts for different resolutions; EZdesk (not sure
about the others) detects when you change resolution and asks if you
want to restore the layout you saved for the resolution you've just
changed to.


One thing I have found (in 7 at least), of the many things that scramble
icon positions: if you've restored a set of icons that were saved at one
grid size, to a system where you have a different size, they will
restore to where they were when you saved them, but almost _any_ change
- such as just moving any icon (even just a little bit by mistake) -
will cause _all_ of them to move. (And it takes some time of trial and
error to find out what spacing you did have when you saved them, if
you've changed it since! [You set the grid by following my "Thanks ..."
paragraph above: there are two settings, Icon Spacing (Horizontal) and
Icon Spacing (Vertical).]) [I was using iconoid for saving/restoring
positions when I discovered this jiggling, but I think it'd happen
whichever you'd saved/restored with.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... "from a person I admire, respect, and deeply love." "Who was that then?"
"Me." (Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Link episode.)