Yes, we are still fighting Vista quirks are here… and counting down the days to Windows 7. Keeping in mind Microsoft’s history for moving release dates, I’m just hoping it’s still in 2009.
I had a client the other day call me about his icons moving around on the screen. I guess, technically, they were just moving back to the original position over on the left hand side of the desktop. He would move them over to the right, and rearrange them as desired… but, a week or so later they would suddenly be over on the left side when he turned on his Vista system.
This particular client has been a loyal client of mine for years, and he had some other stuff he wanted me to repair for him (he was having a small glitch with sending e-mail, which I resolved in just a few minutes and some other minor annoyances)… but, he also wanted me to find the cause for his “wandering” Vista icons.
Since it’s very difficult to troubleshoot a problem that only happens a few times per month, it’s almost impossible to fix something like this with one visit. But, I checked all of the basics and everything seemed to be configured properly. I made just a few minor changes and cleaned up the system a bit (cleaned the registry, etc) and told him to call me if it happens again.
He called a week later, reported that his icons had moved again. Hmmm, a real head-scratcher.
After doing a bit of research, I did come up empty-handed on the root of the problem, but I did find a tool that had promising potential as a workaround.
It’s called Iconoid. It’s available for free at http://www.sillysot.com. There was just one little problem, however… my client’s version of Vista was 64-bit, and apparently the 32-bit version of Iconoid wasn’t going to cut it. So, after doing a little more searching, it seems that someone had “ported” Iconoid to 64-bit and was sharing this application with the world (also for free) and is available at http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/
Enjoy.
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