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Customize Drive Icons

Intended For
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Windows 2003
Windows 2000
Windows Me
Windows 98
Windows 95
Most of us know that you can simply create shortcuts to all the drive icons in My Computer, and then change the icons of the shortcuts. This solution, while relatively easy, is quite limited, especially since the icons aren't reflected in Explorer. Using some of the knowledge from the way Autorun CD's work, there's a simple way to customize your drive icons (for hard disks, floppy disks, and removables):

  • Using a text editor (such as Notepad), type the following:


[autorun]
icon=filename, number
where filename is the name of the file containing the icon (either an ICO, DLL, or EXE file), and number is the index of the icon to use (leave this blank to use the first icon in the file).
  • Save the file as AUTORUN.INF in the root directory of the hard disk you wish to change.

  • Note: This will work even if you've turned off CD-ROM Autorun.

  • Note: This will work for removable drives, but since Windows 98 isn't able to determine when you insert removable media (like it is for CD-ROMs), you need to manually refresh the My Computer or Explorer window by pressing F5.


Written by: Annoyances.org
Last updated: Wednesday, February 7, 2007

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