How to Fix Icon Arrangement on a Windows Desktop

System error, accidental switch to the lower screen resolution or a false keystroke can easily break a custom order of the icons on your desktop. Nothing crucial but how irritating!

In such situations you can automatically recover the icon arrangement instead of doing that manually. There are special utilities which can remember the custom arrangement of the icons and recover it by the user's order. A lot of different solutions to this kind of problems are available in the Internet. We decided to dwell upon just two of them. They both are freeware utilities: Russian Icon Protector and German DIManager X.

First, Icon Protector. Nothing can be simpler than this software. It doesn't require to be installed on your computer. Archived it takes no more than 50 Kb space on the hard disc. On the launch it rolls down to the system panel and can be easily operated by the custom settings.

Icon Protector lets you save 5 different layouts. Saving and recovering the custom layout can be performed through the console command iconprot.exe [sx] [lx] [q]. SX key corresponds to saving icons to Profile #X (digit from 0 to 4). The command LX on the contrary recovers the layout settled previously. Q parameter switches the utility into the "sleeping" mode with warning and confirmation dialogues disabled.

The second software, DIManager X, has a better functionality. It is a 600 Kb installer which can remember as many different icon layouts as you need. It can also check the desktop for icon displacement in settled time periods. Besides, DIManager X has an inbuilt miniature monitor to preview the saved layouts and the module to make the Internet updates real simple.

We do not insist on you preferring DIManager X to Icon Protector or vice versa. It's all up to you.