Solved Desktop Icons Moving

[Fynl]

Hello, this is my first post here so I apologize if it's in the wrong format or location.

I've been having an issue lately with my desktop icons randomly moving around. They don't rearrange themselves, per se, but some icons just plain move, leaving gaps where they use to be. I have auto arrange off and I found a similar thread with suggestions that I have tried, but not many things fix this. The only temporary solution that I can find is to turn off Align Icons to Grid, but is there a more permanent fix for this?

The only other solution that I have ever found is to update my video card driver (GeForce 9500 GT) but the updated driver causes my video card to overheat, so I've rolled that back.

I'm quite lost as to what to do, thank you for any replies

 

[maiki]

Unfortunately, this is a very common problem in Windows. It is happening to me frequently now too, and I have no idea why.

It happened in earlier versions of Windows as well (certainly in XP), I am sure that Microsoft must be aware of it, but I don't know why they have not fixed it by now, something that seems like it would probably be a small problem to fix, but is very annoying.

There are workarounds though. There are a few small freeware utilities available, with which one can take a snapshot of where the icons are on your desktop (remembering where each icon goes), and then can restore them to those positions. Some names for those utilities are Desktop Restore, Desktop Icon Restorer, and Desktop OK. I believe I have also heard of one called Iconoid.

But it is a real shame that Microsoft has not fixed that annoying problem yet!

 

[Britton30]

I have my desktop icons set to Auto Arange and align to Grid and they don't move. Do your move affter a reboot or when?
the best nVIDIA driver has been shown to be the 270.xx, not the newer 275.xx. try that if you haven't.

 

[Fynl]

I forgot to add that they don't move on reboot. However, when I play a game, if I Alt+Tab or end the game, I find that some icons have moved around. Usually it's only one or two, but I tried Alt+Tabbing in and out of a game repeatedly earlier and the icons just went crazy.

Thanks for the input maiki. I've heard of and seen the desktop snapshot programs, but I just wanted to know first if it's something wrong with my system rather than being a windows bug. You've eased my mind a little bit!

Thanks for the suggestion Britton30, I'll see which driver I had beforehand. I know that the last 2 drivers that I updated, the latest one and the one before that, both overheat my driver while using the windows driver rollback feature, it's running fine now.

 

[Britton30]

Another thing to try is have a look at Black Viper's site for suggestions for services you can disable or modify safely. You may have several unneeded services runing.

 

[t-4-2]

Hello, this is my first post here so I apologize if it's in the wrong format or location.

I've been having an issue lately with my desktop icons randomly moving around. They don't rearrange themselves, per se, but some icons just plain move, leaving gaps where they use to be. I have auto arrange off and I found a similar thread with suggestions that I have tried, but not many things fix this. The only temporary solution that I can find is to turn off Align Icons to Grid, but is there a more permanent fix for this?

The only other solution that I have ever found is to update my video card driver (GeForce 9500 GT) but the updated driver causes my video card to overheat, so I've rolled that back.

I'm quite lost as to what to do, thank you for any replies

When I was using a 32-bit machine, I used this tutorial :
Save and Restore Desktop Icon Layout in Windows Vista - How-To Geek
It worked. I had over 150 shortcuts/icons on my desktop at the time.
The tutorial works for 32-bit. Both Vista and Win 7. I vouch for that.

Scroll down near the end, there is a 64-bit install exe. I have not tried it myself. I can't vouch for it.

 

[Fynl]

Well, just to confirm, it's a windows thing and probably not something foreign invading my system right?

 

[t-4-2]

Well, just to confirm, it's a windows thing and probably not something foreign invading my system right?

Yes. It is NOT virus related.

That "desktop icons moving around" issue happens to a lot of people.
Nobody has a permenant fix for it. The closest one, in my knowledge, is the one I gave you.

The tutorial did serve its purpose in my previous Vista computer.

If you are adventurous enough, try the Installer for 64-bit Windows.

 

[Windows Sniper]

Yeha its a Windows Bug, Hello Fynl By the way.

If your Tabbing in and out of games you have to remember that some games have a different resolution/refresh and colour scale. So whilst your tabbing in and out your desktop is moving the icons to keep with the games display ratio and that is what causes your problem, especially if you have a Resolution size and your games are running on half that native size.

I have found the easiest way to Get around it is to enable the Auto-arrange option in the desktop and make sure that the resolution for the games are set to my native Screen Resolution.

See if that works.

Cheers

 

[Fynl]

Yeha its a Windows Bug, Hello Fynl By the way.

If your Tabbing in and out of games you have to remember that some games have a different resolution/refresh and colour scale. So whilst your tabbing in and out your desktop is moving the icons to keep with the games display ratio and that is what causes your problem, especially if you have a Resolution size and your games are running on half that native size.

I have found the easiest way to Get around it is to enable the Auto-arrange option in the desktop and make sure that the resolution for the games are set to my native Screen Resolution.

See if that works.

Cheers

Well I've had resolution changes screw up my icons before, but that usually just moves my few bottom rows somewhere else, rather than moving single, random icons to other locations. I've done research into this and what most people seem to say is that it's a massive move on their part, with most of their icons shifting or re-arranging. I just have 2-3 pop out into random spots, leaving gaps.

But if it's a windows problem I'll just deal with it and try one of the workarounds.

Thanks for your help everybody!

 

[Windows Sniper]

No problems Mate, If you can Mark the Post as Solved It would be Appreciated



And Dont Forget To Rep Anyone You Feel Helped You

 

[maiki]

I have found the easiest way to Get around it is to enable the Auto-arrange option in the desktop and make sure that the resolution for the games are set to my native Screen Resolution.

See if that works.

Cheers

Definitely an annoying Windows bug, that also existed in XP, and I forget if earlier versions as well. Microsoft really should have fixed it by now!

Strange, but I found the exact opposite of what Sniper wrote above to be true.

For some days my icons were in the wrong places every single time I booted up. The same wrong places every time, very different from how I had set them. (Fortunately I had one of the desktop save and restore utilities installed, and restored it to my layout each time. But rather a hassle to do each boot. I right-clicked the desktop, saw that auto-arrange was enabled, and I disabled it. (Snap to grid was already disabled.) After I disabled auto-arrange as well,. that problem has not occurred again.

I don't like snap to gride and auto-ararnge anyhow, as they restrict whether you can place your icons, to their grid, how the system thinks your icons should be arranged, etc. (Therefore, I had not intentionally set it to auto-arrange in the first place. But it somehow got set that way. After changing that setting, that problem has not re-occurred.)

Therefore, if this is happening to you every single time you reboot, right-click the desktop, and look at auto-arrange and snap to grid. If there is a checkbox by either, I would recommend clicking it to uncheck that feature, and see if you continue to have that problem. However, per Sniper's post, if the context menu shows neither enabled, then you might want to check both, and see if that helps.

There are some situations in which the re-arrange will predictably always happan, regardless of those settings. For instance, if you change screen resolution. (That can even occur if you connect to a projector, which has a different resolution than your monitor, you choose clone display or whatever they call it, that could change your monitor resolution to match the projector.) If you boot into Safe Mode, that changes the resolution. When you boot back in normal mode, the resolution is changed, and your icons will be all screwed up. Therefore, it is very good for anyone using windows to use one of the freeware desktop icon save and restore applets, and save your icon setup any time you make a change, a new icon is added, etc., so you can restore it when that occurs.

 

[Windows Sniper]

I have found the easiest way to Get around it is to enable the Auto-arrange option in the desktop and make sure that the resolution for the games are set to my native Screen Resolution.

See if that works.

Cheers

Definitely an annoying Windows bug, that also existed in XP, and I forget if earlier versions as well. Microsoft really should have fixed it by now!

Strange, but I found the exact opposite of what Sniper wrote above to be true.

For some days my icons were in the wrong places every single time I booted up. The same wrong places every time, very different from how I had set them. (Fortunately I had one of the desktop save and restore utilities installed, and restored it to my layout each time. But rather a hassle to do each boot. I right-clicked the desktop, saw that auto-arrange was enabled, and I disabled it. (Snap to grid was already disabled.) After I disabled auto-arrange as well,. that problem has not occurred again.

I don't like snap to gride and auto-ararnge anyhow, as they restrict whether you can place your icons, to their grid, how the system thinks your icons should be arranged, etc. (Therefore, I had not intentionally set it to auto-arrange in the first place. But it somehow got set that way. After changing that setting, that problem has not re-occurred.)

Therefore, if this is happening to you every single time you reboot, right-click the desktop, and look at auto-arrange and snap to grid. If there is a checkbox by either, I would recommend clicking it to uncheck that feature, and see if you continue to have that problem. However, per Sniper's post, if the context menu shows neither enabled, then you might want to check both, and see if that helps.

There are some situations in which the re-arrange will predictably always happan, regardless of those settings. For instance, if you change screen resolution. (That can even occur if you connect to a projector, which has a different resolution than your monitor, you choose clone display or whatever they call it, that could change your monitor resolution to match the projector.) If you boot into Safe Mode, that changes the resolution. When you boot back in normal mode, the resolution is changed, and your icons will be all screwed up. Therefore, it is very good for anyone using windows to use one of the freeware desktop icon save and restore applets, and save your icon setup any time you make a change, a new icon is added, etc., so you can restore it when that occurs.

Hi, Thanks for the Info.

However,

There is a difference in Problem and Solution for this, The OP's Problem was every time he tabbed out from a game, So he had already booted up the PC and it was working before hand.

Secondly, Doing the opposite is not un checking align to grid... it would be checking it Considering i didnt actually suggest that.. Where did you get it from? And all this feature does is makes the icons stick in a 32x32 Bit box and stops them from being overlapped or moved off screen.

Cheers

P.S Also this thread was marked as solved which means the OP has found the answer he was looking for.

 

[Bernardus]

Well nothing stopped Windows 7 from moving my icons, even save and restore won't work in all cases.
Not even having icons on the grid unchecked.
There is one freeware program Iconoid that saves nd restores your desktop layout, but every single time I restart some icons may be displaced and I have to run Iconoid (R click somewhere on your desktop and manage desktop/ icons restore.) It has some other lovely options like hiding your icons and call them up with just one click. Nice clean desktop with hidden icons.
Iconoid - Hide and show desktop icons, maketransparent backgrounds

 

[kelapa]

same as me here dude.

it's look like bug xD

 

[Dadeus]

theory based on malfunctioning video card

I am having the same problem. See if any of this matches yours.

I have two monitors run from one Nvidia graphics card. In the course of changing a setup, my second monitor lost some resolution and now could not match the primary monitor. Corresponding to this, if I VPN in to my computer from home I get a video graphics card error, which I did not get before. My session works fine since my video card at home is ok, but when I get back to work my video is set as CGA and the system needs rebooting. Based on the way icons move when video resolution changes I have a feeling that something is happening to the video settings that is changing the screen resolution to something other than what I have and back again during some refresh state. This moves my icons when I reboot my computer or install new software, or even if I exit certain graphic intensive programs. This could be a video driver issue. Can anyone add some intel to this?

 

[Bernardus]

I found out that if the list is not complete, in the way of a full grid in columns. that is to say some icons on there own Windows is reorganizing your desktop. With filling in these caps the problem solved.
Iconoid is a very handy desktop tool which stores/restores your desktop automatically or with a single click, but also you need to fill out the columns as well. (Say, four full rows with icons).
Anyway my desktop is now stable.

 

[Dadeus]

So, if I understand your email, all I have to do is make sure I don't have any gaps in icons along the sides of my icon grid as displayed on my screen? How is this any different than letting Windows shift everything in a block on the left? That isn't what I want, it isn't what I had just a few weeks ago and it isn't a solution. Neither is using some third party icon app.

 

[Bernardus]

Well it did solve my problems.
You don't need third party programs if you fill out empty places in icons on desktop.
Windows is shifting randomised and without your approval.
I have 4 full columns with icons now and stable.
Iconoid is just very handy to restore settings.
Something like this

 

[Dadeus]

Bernardus, thank you for your time, but what you have here is exactly what I don't want. When windows resets my screen and shifts my icons around, it looks exactly like what you have here. You seem to have adopted the problem as the solution. If I leave my icons where windows moves them they don't shift around anymore and I could say my array is now stable. In reality, windows is probably constantly moving them around still, just putting them in the same location based on whatever location criteria it is using. Placing my icons with gaps between groups is what makes grouping them valuable in the first place.