Easily Change Desktop Shortcuts To Icons Included In XP

Unhappy with the way the shortcut icons on your desktop look?  Here is a quick way to change them to a different icon included in XP.

Here I have a shortcut to a folder of batch files boring old shortcut. 

Now right click the shortcut folder icon and choose Properties.  In the Shortcut Properties window select the Shortcut tab and the Change Icon button.

You can scroll through the included icons in XP and select the one you want to use.  I try to select one that I will remember what it is for.  It seems to make navigating through tons of folders easier.  Especially if there are a few I use a lot.  In this example I made it a star … no reason other than to demonstrate.

   

In my next post I will show you how to customize the desktop icons to your liking.

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This article was originally written on 03/11/08 Tagged with: XP, Windows

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Comments (2)

1. April 22, 2009 1:01 pm
   skywgon

   I would enjoy seeing you do an article about creating custom icons and knowing how to do it, and where to save them so that "Change icon" button could find them. I have experimented with saving a small image from a website. Then, using Paint, editing the image and saving as a small .bmp file. Was partly successful. However, when I directed the "Change icon" option to look in a certain folder, it would, and it would use the icon. Then, later, it could not find the folder and defaulted back to a generic icon found in the generic icon folder. Someone like you could tell us how to make this custom icon thing work right….. Thanks for the website…

2. October 17, 2009 6:32 am
   Niiii

   I want to know that too. :/