Solved Taskbar Icon Order - Where Is It Saved?

[dave99]

Taskbar Icon Order - Where Is It Saved? [SOLVED]

I just had an issue, though have had it several times over the years on different systems - it's not file corruption. These are of course Win7 systems (this time, Ultimate, SP1, x64).

Make some change or install some app (This time it was Teracopy 3.17), and the order of the icons on the taskbar gets scrambled. "Lock the taskbar" is set.

I don't mean quick launch, rather when you right-click the taskbar and choose -> Toolbars -> New Toolbar, and pick a folder to put there, then can drag the icons to be in the order you want.

Where does Win7 remember the order of these taskbar icons? Is it a registry key or some file or ???

Upon researching this, I came across someone stating the order is in this reg key, but at the moment (at least in the scrambled order state), there isn't even a Favorites subkey under Taskband so that's not it.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband\Favorites

I'm continuing to investigate this, current lead is possibly this reg subkey, encrypted but I'll see if I can find a registry backup and extract that key:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{...}\Count

Edit: Okay I attempted to extract the above reg key from a month old backup that included NTUSER.DAT, deleted existing key in registry, merged extracted key, rebooted, and it didn't re-sort the icons the way they were, but it did wipe out a lot of apps that auto load at boot, so I reverted back to the export of that reg key before I changed it.

 

[dave99]

I got busy on something else and gave up trying to find the save location for icon order, had already spent as much time as the cumulative total it has taken in the past to just drag them around to get the order right again.

I did try running sysinternals process monitor and watching the registry, but I hadn't used it in a long time and WOW does Win7 make a massive # of registry I/O, so much so that I was filtering to reduce the quantity and not sure if I inadvertently filtered out what I was looking for, but I didn't see anything obvious as far as whether icon order is stored in the registry.

From now on, on less often used systems, I'll make a screenshot ahead of time to aid in getting them back where they were, faster. I'll keep this project on a back burner and if I happen to figure this out, I'll update the topic.

 

[dave99]

Okay this is getting ridiculous.

Same system that had those taskbar, toolbar folder icons scramble previously, had been rebooted multiple times while setting some things up and always retained the icon order, then today I launched Windows Media Player (which I never use - it was asking me for setup information to start using it, so IDK if it would scramble the icons every time), and BOOM(!), icons scrambled again.

The start menu and desktop icons aren't being rearranged - at least I didn't notice the desktop icons rearranged but they are hidden so I wouldn't. If I right-click on desktop and choose View, "Auto arrange icons" is not checkmarked and is grayed out.

I don't understand why this is happening, and I still haven't found where their order is stored.

 

[dave99]

I now have the solution to this issue.

1) You must have a backup of your NTUSER.DAT file. I had one that I extracted from a partition image backup, but you could have just backed up that file itself, previously when the icon sort order was correct. It is in the path %userfolder%\NTUSER.DAT

2) Run Regedit, select HKEY_USERS -> File (menu choice) -> Load Hive, and choose the backup (old) NTUSER.DAT file, not the one currently in %userfolder%\NTUSER.DAT

3) Now Regedit wants you to name this Hive, Give it a temporary name like OldHive - it doesn't matter what you name it, just remember what it was named. I will use "OldHive" for the examples below.

4) In Regedit, navigate to HKEY_USERS\OldHive\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams, and right-click on that key to select it and Export it to a file named something like Streams.reg

5) Do the same for the child sub-key Desktop. #4 should have backed that up already but just in case, do this too, named something like Desktop.reg

6) Now click File -> Unload Hive, while OldHive is highlighted. You could close Regedit now.

7) If step 6 didn't have OldHive highlighted, when you Unloaded the Hive, then the paths in the two files may need edited. To do that, Edit the two, Streams.reg and Desktop.reg files in Notepad. If the registry path contains "HKEY_USERS\OldHive" Then use Notepad to do an Edit->Replace function, find HKEY_USERS\OldHive and replace with HKEY_CURRENT_USER - Streams.reg will replace it multiple times but Desktop.reg, only once. Save the files.

8) Right-click Streams.reg and choose Merge. Do the same for Desktop.reg

9) Do any one of these 3 things next: 1) Log off and back on, 2) Kill Explorer with Task Manager then menu choice File-> New Task (Run...) Explorer, or 3) Reboot

10) That's all, your taskbar toolbars' Icons should now be sorted as they were when the NTUSER.DAT backup was created.