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Tired of seeing your icons constantly re-arranged ?
Every time you swap between screen resolutions, or turn on (or off) your dual monitor, you will most probably experience that you have to re-arrange your desktop icons.
Many of the applications for dual monitor have a feature for saving and restoring the position (and layout) of your Desktop Icons. But if you don’t already have this functionality at hand, then this is for you.
How to Add the Save / Restore Icon Layout functionality to your Context Menu.
As the 64-bit system will not allow you to register a 32-bit DLL (which is what makes this work), depending on your system (32-bit or 64-bit) you have to choose between the following options. If you are in doubt try the 32-bit version, and if that fails try the other one.
32-bit System
- Download this file: Desktop Icon
- Unpack it to a temporary folder, and move the file named:
LAYOUT.DLLto the System32 folder (c:\windows\system32) - Then Double-Click
LAYOUT.REGto add some entries to your registry file
If you wonder about the LAYOUT.DLL file, don’t worry. It’s a free DLL provided by Microsoft in the Windows NT Resource Kit. Originally designed for the “good old” Windows NT Platform (Windows 2000 etc.), but works on all Windows systems.
64-bit system
- Download this file: dips64-setup (or from here: http://amip.tools-for.net/files/dips64/)
- Run the EXE file to install it.
- SHIFT + RIGHT-CLICK on your desktop to see the entries in your Context menu. You might want to click a few time before you actually see it – but it works
About Thomas
Computer geek from the age of 7, which amounts to 30 years of computer experience. From the early days (when every computer company had their own OS) of DOS, Windows 1.0 through Seven...
Thanks for the tip, this will defo come in handy when refreshing explorer or wot-not on the dual-screen :)
Does this work on x64?
The ‘Desktop Icon’ link should point to: http://www.mintywhite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Desktop-Icon.zip
I haven’t installed it on my x64 system as of yet – but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work there.
I fixed the download link – thanks for pointing it out.
Thank you very much for sharing this, this is surely better than any 3rd party software.
Just came across this and tried it on Win 7 x64. Didn’t work. Any thoughts or ideas?
From what I gather – this is a 32-bit DLL – and a 64-bit system will not allow you to register it.
I am searching to see if there is a 64-bit version out there somewhere.
I’ll keep you posted
Thanks Thomas! Just installed the 64 bit version for my Win7Pro64 and all seems to be going well.
works great on windows 7 64 bit.. thanks
Dear all,
The 64-bit tool does not work on my Windows 7 Professionnel – 64 bits (in french).
Here the procedure:
– click on “Save icons position” -> there is no confirmation dialog box.
– move one icon
– click on “Restore icons position” -> no icon moves.
I try with on monitor, dans with two monitor.
Any idea or patch.
Got the menu when I shift+right-clicked, but just did nothing on Windows 7- 64 bit. Not sure if it’s the saving or the restoring that isn’t working or both :(
Not working for me on Win7 64 bit. It used to. Is this by chance graphics card dependent?
Doesn’t work on Win7 32 bit
Worked for me Winx64 Ultimate, didn’t at first and had to do a restart before it took effect.
This is not working at all, is there a fix? Win7x64
can you change it so I don’t have to use SHIFT + right-click so it’ll always show up every time I right-click??