Desktop Icon Sorting Arrangement

[seekermeister]

I don't use desktop icons much, except for temporary files, but even so, it would be very useful for me to be able to set the default arrangement in a different fashion than seems to be available in the Desktop View Menu. I would like to have all icons arrange horizontally, starting at the top of the screen, rather than vertically, as seems to be the design.

I know that I can turn off the auto arrange function and place the icons in that fashion manually, but when I reboot, some will remain horizontal, while others go back to vertical. I also know that I could turn off aligning to grids, and they probably would stay horizontal, but I would like to let that remain active for ease of arrangement.

To accomplish that, it would be necessary to tweak the default arrangement from vertical to horizontal in the OS. I went through the tutorials where I think this would be, if possible, but found nothing...is it possible?

 

[MilesAhead]

This utility claims to save and restore positions in Windows 32 and 64 bit flavors:

Download IconRestorer 1.0.8.1 Free - Backup and restore icons position on desktop separately for every screen resolution - Softpedia

I wrote one myself, but it's an Explorer 32 bit DLL. Therefore it only works with 32 bit Explorer:
IconSet Desktop Icon Save Restore

For mine to work AutoArrange has to be disabled. I imagine the first one is the same but I haven't tried it.

 

[MilesAhead]

This Tip may also work but it saves the info to registry rather than a file:

Save and Restore Desktop Icon Layout in Windows Vista - How-To Geek

For myself I've gotten rid of these headaches by not using desktop icons. I use RocketDock and Standalone Stacks to categorize app shortcuts. Much less frustrating.

 

[seekermeister]

Thanks, I didn't try the tweak in your last post, but I did install Icon Restorer, as suggested. It does seem to work...at least the icons were where they should have been after rebooting once, but I'm not sure that was due to Icon Restorer or not, because it appears that it is designed to restore by using it's functions manually. That is better than before, but ideally I would like to tweak the OS's layout so that it did it automatically all by itself. I guess that would mean changing the grid lines to horizontal, rather than vertical. It seems that was possible in older Nvidia drivers, but I found nothing like that now.

I also use Object Dock for arranging most icons. But like I said, the desktop icon arrangement is for managing temporary icon placement, since I frequently use the desktop as a parking place for items that I'm actively working with, rather than having to go hunting for them in the file system.

 

[MilesAhead]

If you find an icon restore that works just by running it(rather than right clicking the desktop or whatnot) you can use a startup delay to run it after the desktop is stabilized on boot. For example WinPatrol free has a delayed start option.

There are a ton that work in 32 bit Windows. It's 64 bit that's a pita. Also I think on W7 there are times when the class name of the desktop is Progman and other times when it's WorkerW. This confuses a lot of desktop icon positioning programs.