Devices and Printers - Change Device Icons with Custom Icons

it's set at 30% of disk space and anyhow, it should still have had, at the very least the restore point of 2 weeks ago, or the one 2 weeks before that and not one of 5 months ago, right? Anyhow, in er: to the question of this post--a restore point, seeing it's 5 months old, is not an option. Any other way?

I spent about a week trying to learn the Device Stage Visual Editor with very limited success. I could get one icon and it's metadata changed (i.e. for camera) but as soon as I applied the "save" and "add to metadatastore" for a second device, (i.e. for my computer), it would revert my previous run. After finding this thread though, I have now successfully changed all my system icons in Devices and Printers to true-to-life icons for my exact hardware. Awesome write-up and thanks a million to the O.P. Only took about 10 minutes total time once I found this thread. Would have taken less time but I had to convert some .png's over to multi-resolution .ico's
Again, thanks a bunch for the tutorial.:)

I managed to create an icon for my old HP printer using this nice tutorial.
But what if this printer is shared across an office? Sometimes having a realistic icon helps choosing the right printer...

I could not find any dmrcache folder for the shared printer...
I guess its only available for locally installed hardware.

Is there a way to export the device metadata?

Works like a charm on Windows 8.1 Update 1 ))) Set the Compatibility mode of EXE file to Windows 7 after install and simply ignore .NET error message )

m5iveg said:

Works like a charm on Windows 8.1 Update 1 ))) Set the Compatibility mode of EXE file to Windows 7 after install and simply ignore .NET error message )

Hi, i'm trying to change my icons as well. I use Win 8.1 Update 1 x64 but I don't have any Hardware ID on the list while trying to change the System icon.

If i try to search the Hardware ID, the only thing that can be the System hasa Hardware ID of 'acpiapic' which is not valid.



How did you found the right ID?

Hi Ageeb,

Clear tutorial: thanks!

However, I've stumbled across a problem that I can't seem to find my way around. I'm on a Windows 8.1 x64 system and have changed the compatibility of DeviceMetadataWizard.exe to Windows 7. On my system, it was found at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Corporation\Microsoft Devices and Printers Metadata Authoring Wizard".

Using "run as administrator" made it impossible to add an icon to the wizard, so I turned that off.

I can fill in everything, but when I press "finish", there's no package created in my back up location, nor in the system's local (which I believe is in the link above, correct?). It does show a weird file at first in my back up location, but when I exit the folder and then go back in, it disappears and everything is as it was before. So, basically, what it comes down to is: I can do everything, but it results in nothing.

What am I missing/doing wrong?

Cheers!

How do I revert the process? Now all my icons look the same. Even after uninstalling and removing one device and replacing it with a totally different name brand and model all my pointer device icons (mouse, pen tablet etc.) not only look the same but are named 'Pen tablet' as well. See attached photo.