Customising folder icons on removable HDD

I hope someone can help me solve a problem I'm having. I have a removable drive that I have a vast amount of information backed up and stored in many different folders and sub-folders. When stored locally I can of course edit the icon used for each folder so it's easily recognisable, what I want to do though is assign custom icons to different folders on this external/removable drive and have them displayed on multiple systems, basically any computer it's plugged into.

Now I know how to customise the drive icon with autorun.inf but I can't seem to find a way of assigning multiple folders. I have seen the desktop.ini method mentioned but I can't for the life of me get it to work. Anyone have a clue?

Using Win7 32 & 64bit.

Cheers, Matt.

Check out this thread and in particular what Brink has to offer.
http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/7207-messed-up-external-hard-drive-icon.html
Post back for more help.

Welcome to 7 Forums!

The Howling Wolves said:

Check out this thread and in particular what Brink has to offer.
http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/7207-messed-up-external-hard-drive-icon.html
Post back for more help.

Welcome to 7 Forums!

Click to expand...

I had already looked through this thread, it has some good information but nothing pertaining to setting custom icons to an external folder system so that it will be visible on on multiple systems.

I thought there might be some kind of script that could be understood by the OS so that it assigned icons to specified folders when recognising the external drive.

The desktop.ini file depending on what you read seems to have all the answers but I can't seem to get it to display and if I could on one system wouldn't I then have to modify all the other systems it's used on to be able to display these icons?

Okay, so I've stuck at it and reread many things. The desktop.ini file is the key to this, I think I wasn't leaving a space at the front of the address before and that was the problem, it seems to work ok now. First you need to make a text document called "desktop.ini" and put that in the folder that you want to change the icon for.


I chose to have all my icons in a folder called "My Icons" that I put in the root of my external drive and set as "hidden". I then input the above text in the desktop.ini file directing it to the location of the icon I want to use, in this instance it's the root of the drive (left blank so that it just picks up in any computer it's plugged into) then the My Icons folder and finally the icon I want to use. I also put a comma and zero after it so that it selects just that icon. If you were directing it to a file with multiple icons contained in it like an .exe file you would have to change the number to the corresponding icon in the file.

It seems to work but not always displays right first time, going about your business or unplugging the drive it will eventually refresh. If you have problems with a folder, right click it, go to properties/customize/change icon/reset default, and then start again and it will lose settings for that folder. When you have set the icon properly for the folder I would suggest setting the desktop.ini file to "hidden" and "read only" to avoid it being seen or changed.