How to stop desktop icons from rearranging?
Kenny
Using Windows XP SP3, my laptop is connected to a docking station that
utilizes two monitors. At the end of the day I logged off, and take my
laptop. When I come back in the morning, I reconnect to the docking station
and my icons are rearranged. I have unchecked "auto arrange". "Aligned to
Grid" is checked. The video resolution is changed once I connect to the
docking station. Does this have anything to do with the icons? Any ideas?
Thanks.
Terry R.
on the keyboard:
Hi Kenny,
If your resolution is changed, that would be a good reason why it keeps
changing. Kind of like going into Safe Mode and back.
You could try Standby or Hibernate before disconnecting instead of
logging off and make sure you're connected to the docking station before
turning it on. Then your laptop would think nothing had changed. But
if you turn it on at home, you'll have the same problem coming back in.
--
Terry R.
***Reply Note***
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Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
Pegasus (MVP)
"Kenny" <Ke...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:286D83EA-3072-4652...@microsoft.com...
You can save your desktop layout using the "Lock Desktop Icons"
tool available from here: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_d.htm.
When the icons have moved, right-click "My Computer" and restore
their position. Remember to reboot the machine after installation!
undisclosed
I'm going to guess that this is a homer versus office thing.
At the office the icon arrangement is a part of you user profile stored
on a network server; at home, you're using a local copy of your profile
in lieu of the domain-stored version, and they're different rather than
being synchronized. Get an admin to find out why you apparently don't
have rights to your profile on the server, and I'm betting that when
those rights are restored your profiles will synch up.
The usual reason the domain profiles become inaccessible goes something
like this:
1) A user has a problem; the admin thinks I can fix this if I could
only get to the redirected folder(s) and profile in the user's on-line
folder.
2) Admin can't see the user's profile/redirected foldrs, BY DESIGN, but
they know the fix. Take ownership, assign themselves permissions, then
poke around in files they won't understand anyway, and eventually
realize they can't find any problem.
3) Admin give user back their permissions, but retains ownership "just
in case I need to go back in there again." Regardless, having taken
ownership, they can't just "give it back" because you take ownership,
you can't have it assigned to you. The only way for the user to get
ownership back is to navigate to the network folder where folder
redirection and profiles are stored, then take ownership of their own
folders. That MAY fix the problem.
4) As often as not, the same admin who thought they could fix the
problem by taking ownership of your folders is also the same type who
never bothered to look at a resource kit to find out what the proper
permissions should be on the root folder for the profile and redirected
folders folders should be, guessed - or worse - even when the domain
correctly created folders with the correct permissions, they decided the
domain was wrong "and they know how there were supposed to be, so
changed them." Then of course, they don't work right, or perhaps even at
all, and they blame MS.
5) Then there are the management types that feel the need to see what
"their people" are storing in their redirected folders, and change the
permissions "so I can help them if they ever have any problems."
Changing the root folder permissions and user folder permissions to
allow admin access breaks the system MS crafted to keep users' data
secure and accessible to users to the exclusion of meddling admin types.
The result is the same: when those permissions are changed, redirected
folders and profiles get screwed up and don't work correctly. For 15
years I've heard "roaming profiles and folder redirection don't work"
and in every single case I've found that the problem was that the
permissions on either the root folder or the redirected folder(s) had
been changed. When put back the way they were supposed to be in the
first place, and after having spent countless hours walking users
through the process of taking ownership of their folders and files back,
then reassigning the proper permissions, everything was fine. Until the
next rocket-scientist admin decided MS got it wrong, or thy just had to
see what some user was storing on the server, took ownership (again) and
broke the whole darned thing (again). Then you ask around of the people
with admin rights, and "nobody done nothin'" and yet you'd have to be an
admin to do it in the first place. Like users are out there resetting
permission on the root folder - as if.
Bottom line get you admin to crack a resource kit, find the right
permissions for the root folder and user folders as well as permission
of these critical folders, then either remote into the user's machine
and take ownership of the user's folders, then set the right
permissions, and your problems will be solved.
Paul1307
--
Paul1307
Shenan Stanley
(Paul1307 using vBulletin USENET gateway)
<snip>
You do realize you responded to an old (July 1, 2008 - welecom to December
20, 2009...) posting and did it without quoting any of the previous
conversation, right?
For those who are interested in the really old posting and/or what Paul1307
added to it a year and a half later...
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_frm/thread/b4c860e3a7800d53/
Enjoy!
--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
undisclosed
Yes, I know it's old, but a quick scan through Google shows that it's
still relevant and somewhat prevalent. There are posts out there - same
problem - with Windows 7 demonstrating that it hasn't gone away.
BTW - you're still monitoring this thing a year-and-a-half later! LOL
Paul1307
--
Paul1307
Pegasus [MVP]
"undisclosed" said this in news item
news:e83eef40dbde922d...@nntp-gateway.com...
No, he isn't. All he did was to check on Google for some phrase in your
post. I did the same thing the other day when you dragged up a 4-year old
thread. Scavenging, are you?
Shenan Stanley
undisclosed wrote:
(Paul1307 using vBulletin USENET gateway)
<snip>
Shenan Stanley wrote:
> You do realize you responded to an old (July 1, 2008 - welecom to
> December 20, 2009...) posting and did it without quoting any of the
> previous conversation, right?
>
> For those who are interested in the really old posting and/or what
> Paul1307 added to it a year and a half later...
> http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_frm/thread/b4c860e3a7800d53/
>
> Enjoy!
Monitoring? No. It popped up as a *new* message in my newsreader. I saw
the "Re:" and noticed it seemed to be an answer with no actual reference. I
then used Google Groups to search for the subject line - in hopes you had
not changed it. You had not, I got a hit and provided the link to the full
posting.
All you had to do was quote some of the original post or do what I did and
provide people with a link to the original conversation so your posting was
not just sitting out there - alone for most people. Doesn't seem that
difficult to me.
Your 'answers' seem to have little to do with the problem at hand.
� They were talking about the arrangement of icons on the desktop.. The
order that the icons were placed, etc.
� You seem to be talking about permissions on files/folders.
No relation.
If I like my "My Computer" (or "Computer" dependent on the OS) icon at the
bottom right-most area of my screen - the permissions granted on that
icon/shortcut/link are not really in question or a necessary component of my
arrangement techniques (nor do they affect the arrangement I have chosen.)
My last sugggestion for you would be that you review the older topics you
are reviving carefully before responding. ;-)
undisclosed
Well this will probably get fragged too. "Permissions don't matter."
Hmm, and where do you think this info is stored? The icon permissions
are part of the user's profile, which is in a file. And the user noted
that it was different in two locations, home, and "in the morning" if I
remember correctly, implying home and work. Presumably, when he's at
work he's on a network, and when he's on a network his profile is stored
on a network file server.
Which is why so many people seem to think that the problem of
self-motivating icons is a problem, of what, some precious whim of their
desktop and the auto-arrange function. Hardly. Two different profiles
implies two different icon arrangements, or if you prefer, the two
different icon arrangements point to two unsynchronized profiles. Which
implies two distinct locations for those profiles, one on the local
computer, the other on a network store. And on the network store, the
ownership and permissions on the folder(s) and files where the "roaming
profile" and redirected folders are stored has everything to do with
whether when a user logs in he can successfully pull his profile (that
would be the one containing the location and arrangement of the desktop
icons, wallpaper, screen-saver, etc.) is stored and retrieved, and where
changes made to the profile are stored when the user logs off.
i guess maybe you had to have spent 10 years or so trouble-shooting
some of the world's largest computer networks to make the oblique
connection between desktop icons and permissions on a network store...
So it's my fault that when you post a reply on the site it's too dumb
to associate with the thread within which it is posted? Sorry, didn't
realize I had to quote from previous threads to tie things together;
aren't computers supposed to be smart enough to do that without manual
intervention?
Paul1307
--
Paul1307
VanguardLH
> BTW - you're still monitoring this thing a year-and-a-half later! LOL
You are posting through a leech site (and worse doesn't even identify
itself) pretending to have forums by running a webnews-for-dummies interface
that submits improperly formatted posts through a gateway to Usenet (aka
newsgroups). No one is monitoring the old thread. Your post showed up as a
NEW post but you didn't even bother quoting to what you were REPLYING.
What is Usenet (aka newsgroups):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroups
http://www.masonicinfo.com/newsgroups.htm
http://www.mcfedries.com/Ramblings/usenet-primer.asp
When using a webnews-for-dummies interface, like Microsoft's Communities or
Google Groups or a forum-to-Usenet proxy, those are gateways to leech from
Usenet or to provide web-based access for Usenet-ignorant users. Despite
the appearance of a forum, you are still participating in Usenet.
Shenan Stanley
(Paul1307 using vBulletin USENET gateway)
<snip>
Shenan Stanley wrote:
> You do realize you responded to an old (July 1, 2008 - welecom to
> December 20, 2009...) posting and did it without quoting any of the
> previous conversation, right?
>
> For those who are interested in the really old posting and/or what
> Paul1307 added to it a year and a half later...
> http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_frm/thread/b4c860e3a7800d53/
>
> Enjoy!
undisclosed wrote:
> Yes, I know it's old, but a quick scan through Google shows that
> it's still relevant and somewhat prevalent. There are posts out
> there - same problem - with Windows 7 demonstrating that it hasn't
> gone away.
>
> BTW - you're still monitoring this thing a year-and-a-half later!
> LOL
Shenan Stanley wrote:
> Monitoring? No. It popped up as a *new* message in my newsreader.
> I saw the "Re:" and noticed it seemed to be an answer with no
> actual reference. I then used Google Groups to search for the
> subject line - in hopes you had not changed it. You had not, I got
> a hit and provided the link to the full posting.
>
> All you had to do was quote some of the original post or do what I
> did and provide people with a link to the original conversation so
> your posting was not just sitting out there - alone for most
> people. Doesn't seem that difficult to me.
>
> Your 'answers' seem to have little to do with the problem at hand.
>
> � They were talking about the arrangement of icons on the desktop..
> The order that the icons were placed, etc.
> � You seem to be talking about permissions on files/folders.
>
> No relation.
>
> If I like my "My Computer" (or "Computer" dependent on the OS) icon
> at the bottom right-most area of my screen - the permissions
> granted on that icon/shortcut/link are not really in question or a
> necessary component of my arrangement techniques (nor do they
> affect the arrangement I have chosen.)
>
> My last sugggestion for you would be that you review the older
> topics you are reviving carefully before responding. ;-)
Still not quoting, eh? No worries - I put it all back.
Let's go with your paraphrase - it's not what I said. You say I said,
"Permissions don't matter." <-- you even put it in quotation marks like that
is what I said exactly. Nope. Luckily - it is archived indefinitely and I
quote what I am responding to when it is important. Notice - everything is
back above. ;-) My problem was not with your answer originally - and if you
want to throw out some theories on year and a half old postings and discuss
them - sure - I'll be continuing to do that for at least one more posting.
My issue was/still is your lack of quotation of previous posting - points of
reference. You cannot tell from your posting what you are replying to, what
was said before, etc - unless you happen to use the same news server as you
do (or web forum or whatever) or you go and look it up yourself. Poor show.
Now - you somehow made a connection with the original poster saying, "Using
Windows XP SP3, my laptop is connected to a docking station that utilizes
two monitors. At the end of the day I logged off, and take my laptop. When I
come back in the morning, I reconnect to the docking station and my icons
are rearranged."; and what you decide it is, "At the office the icon
arrangement is a part of you user profile stored on a network server"...
Okay... When the other two answers - the ones that were not disputed over a
year and a half of time - have to do with nothing but the actual placement
of the icons, I am unsure how you can jump to that conclusion.
Unless the network is highly restricted (don't believe this to be the case -
after all they *take their laptop* at night) - it is doubtful they are using
*any* sort of roaming profile/redirected folders. Maybe offline folders,
but even that would not rearrange your desktop. Unless the network admin
decided to use mandatory profiles or the profile itself is corrupted -
nothing you state is probable. In fact - the most probable answers have
been covered. Screen resolution difference (night time use vs. daytime
use - dual monitors vs. the single monitor of the laptop) - and painfully
obvious in this case is the fact they use their laptop as a laptop and as a
desktop with two monitors. So they probably put icons on both monitors,
take it home and the laptop will automatically adjust to the new resolution
of the single monitor so all icons are accesible and then it will *keep*
things that way - even when reconnected to the higher resolution dual
monitor setup the next day.
The solution given that works best IMO - something to remember/save icon
placement and allow you to restore it (or automatically restore it).
Several exist. Some come with the full software for the video cards.
It is a weak spot of Windows OSes - agreed - not remembering between monitor
swaps (or sometimes, remembering where open windows were placed even when
you don't have the monitors there anymore.)
I have spent _longer than 10 years_ on very large networks with romaing
profiles and 10's of thousands of users and know that unless you are doing
something very strict (mandatory profiles), are somehow corrupting profiles
or - as I think in this case - something that you think would be mundane
(the use of dual monitors in one location, single in another), the icon
placement will remain the same as you last set it for. Permissions,
re-synching with the network stored roaming profile, etc - won't do anything
to your icon placement as long as your ntuser.dat (registry) stays intact.
Only if there is a network hiccup during logon/logoff, some other corruption
of the ntuser.dat or (again) a mandatory profile in place would this rarity
occur where the icons get resorted with a roaming profile.
I don't believe this person has a roaming profile (active directory based)
and even if they do, I don't believe it is mandatory. I believe the
simplest and most obvious answer was/is still correct: They use dual
monitors at work, and just the laptop elsewhere and the Windows has
*nothing* built in to remember the location of monitors between different
resolutions. You have taken what was a simple issue, which would occur
whether he was on the same actual network and just switching between a
single monitor dock and dual montior dock, and made it something much more
than anyone (I suppose even the OP - considering they did not dispute the
answer in a year and a half) would normally assume it to be. While there is
some credence to your theory - if you put it in exact terms of roaming
profiles/network stored profiles/mandatory profiles/corruption of the
ntuser.dat - it is a much better bet that it's just a case of a problem that
occurs when anyone switches from multiple monitors to single monitor and
back again. ;-)
So I think that your original assumption was flawed. The explanation
there-after is not horrible (is within the realm of possibility) - but has
some mis-information in it without further explanation. I believe, quite
simply, you are assuming too much and figured you would not be questioned on
it because the post was so old, the user may not even remember they posted.
undisclosed
Shenan Stanley;1716732 Wrote:
> undisclosed wrote:
> (Paul1307 using vBulletin USENET gateway)
> <snip>
>
> Shenan Stanley wrote:
> > You do realize you responded to an old (July 1, 2008 - welecom to
> > December 20, 2009...) posting and did it without quoting any of the
> > previous conversation, right?
> >
> > For those who are interested in the really old posting and/or what
> > Paul1307 added to it a year and a half later...
> (http://tinyurl.com/yb3jlwr)
> (http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html)
I'll presume that putting the quotes in, while making the reply
tediously long, some makes me a better person. My assumption - forgive
me - was that since when I click the link in email it takes me to a site
where all the replies appear in chronological order made the quotes
unnecessary. Apparently not.
I didn't even notice that the original post was over a year old, nor
had I noticed, that I would have considered that a reason - or not - for
trying to "slide a quick one past the eagle-eyed." My original point was
that when one googles the question of migrating icons, the usual answers
are "turn off auto-arrange," which I consider to be a shallow response.
I didn't state that roaming profiles were mandatory, only that in my
recollection, when a new user is created in AD, it is the default.
The networks I worked on, and I confess to feeling a little silly in
even saying this since it starts to sound like "mine is bigger than
yours," started out at about 150,000 users and eventually ranged up to
about 1 million or more. And, I was neither a "system admin" nor someone
on site maintaining my local fold. I led the AD design team during the
design and test phase, and my title was "special projects" for most of
that time, which was sort of a euphemism for "after a problem works its
way through local support to the national help desk, once it's festered
for three to six month, eventually my VP would be asking me to take a
look at it, or asking if I still kept a bag packed full of traveling
clothes in the car and could I get "out there" as soon as possible.
Generally speaking, by the time a problem came to my attention, the
simple and common things had all been tried.
Having said that, I assumed that our user was bright enough to realize
that any icons spread over two monitors in one location would be
scrambled when he went back and forth between a one and two monitor
configuration. So let's assume he was at least that bright.
We used roaming profiles and folder redirection for good reasons: 1) a
user could move from computer to computer (all virtually identical
software and configurations) and expect to see familiar desktops,
wallpaper, etc. This is not uncommon in large environments where some
users may spend part of their time on the "factory floor," time at a
desk, and time as a VPN user. 2) workstations crash. Unfortunately, if
all of a user's data is on the desktop (which is not usually well-backed
up), days, weeks, months or even years worth of data can vaporize.
Stored on a server, one relies on daily backups to ensure that users'
mission-critical work is never lost. Try telling a VP that his work is
irretrievably lost following a system crash, and, especially if he's
read a few computer rags or talked to his buddies elsewhere, you'll find
yourself in the embarrassing position of trying to explain why proven
Microsoft technology - i.e. roaming profiles and folder redirection -
weren't in place on "his" network. It's almost as bad as trying to
explain that "yes, we do backups every night, but we never tired to do a
restore, so we didn't know the backup process wasn't working." 3) we
periodically rolled out new workstation configurations either across the
network, local servers, or CD/DVD distribution. They were almost always
"first wipe the local drive slick, then install the OS/workstation
software. Users were periodically reminded that their workstation
"wasn't theirs, belonged to the organization and they shouldn't be
keeping any important documents or data on the local machine - that's
why we use(d) roaming profiles and folder redirection." Usually after
one catastrophic loss of data per site, area or district, all users
understood where they should be keeping their important work.
I prefaced my original response (I believe, if memory serves me) by
noting that the user should check with their system admin to see if
roaming profiles and folder redirection were being used as that could be
the source of the problem. Laptops are more prevalent now than years
ago, and hence the problem has the potential to be more vexing, and a
great reason to use roaming profiles. Two monitors at the office, only
one when the laptop is taken home? No problem! One profile on the (AD)
server for those multiple-monitor situations at the office, a second
local profile for when the laptop is used at home. They're not
synchronized, but you wouldn't want them to be, right? And it would be
obvious that one desktop was the home configuration, the other, the work
configuration. But again, giving the user credit, I'd assumed that
simply ping-ponging between two desktop icon configurations wasn't the
problem; "randomly changing" icon placement was. Perhaps I read too much
into the situation.
ntuser.dat goes back about 20 years and to the best of my knowledge,
icon locations are not a part of the registry, but archaic files left
over from the earliest incarnations of Windows. One problem is that
less-clever users than folks like you assume that when they rearrange
their icons "something happens" and the configuration is immediately
saved - somewhere. Unfortunately, user setting are saved only when the
user logs off or powers down, and if there is a problem with file
permissions in the target file or folder where the profile(s) are
stored, their modified icon locations (wallpaper selection, screen
saver, etc.) aren't saved. Hence we're back to the permissions thingy,
wherever it may exist, either on the local computer or on a server
someplace. And as I tried to point out, "show me an admin who says
'roaming profiles and folder redirection don't work' and I'll show you
someone who changed file and folder permissions and ownership of those
folders and files on the server 'to help someone' without realizing the
damage he'd caused for that and every other user using that particular
store." I've seen whole site and hundreds of users brought to their
knees because someone who thought they knew what they were doing messed
around in areas they'd neglected to research on technet or in the
resource kit to find out what those ownership and permissions setting
should have been. And once they've changed permissions on the root
folder they've effectively locked out every user of that folder from
being able to write their profiles back to the server. Profiles are a
bit more picky about ownership than redirected folders, and more subtle
to detect if you haven't either "been there - done that" or had to
follow up someone else's well-intended but uninformed efforts.
A bit deeper than necessary? Probably, but the shallow "it's probably
because you've got auto-arrange turned on" might suffice for some home
user, but not someone on a network. Also, since Vista, ownership and
permissions even on the local drive for the folders where profiles and
documents are stored work more like their network AD counterparts, that
is, even an admin on a computer doesn't have access to another user's
profile unless they really get persistent in trying to gain access to
it, and then, the user won't know what isn't working or why, or that the
underlying reason is that they don't have the necessary
ownership/permissions to update their own profile, only that "the icons
keep changing." You don't really get any indication that when logging
off, your profile didn't update correctly; all you know is that when you
next log on, the icons have changed. See, it is all about ownership and
permissions...
As you pointed out, it's about ntuser.dat, but it's also about
ntuser.dat.dat, every .ini in every folder, etc. etc.
A further word about big networks. In a small shop, a problem that can
only occur "one in every 1,000 users" isn't likely to be something that
pops up every day. But when you have 100,000 users, now you have 100
people, likely geographically dispersed across the country or perhaps
even across the globe, and Murphy's law being what it is, those 100
sufferers won't all be at one location; if you have 100 sites, you'll
probably have one at each, and you'll have 100 district managers
screaming that "I'm losing money because one of my key people can't work
on their computer." Or worse, it will be the district manager themselves
suffering directly. After a while, the unexpected becomes the norm, and
though I've always tried to cover the simple solution first and quickly,
it doesn't usually take long before you're into those whack-job problems
where "if the solution was simple, someone else would have already fixed
it." I'd like to assume that by the time someone brings something to
this forum the simple stuff's already been tried - and failed, and that
the cause of the problem is more subtle, less common, and less likely to
have been explored, let alone explained. More folks would be better in
this business if they thought more like NTSB investigators. The point
isn't to explain whey the plane fell out of the sky - duh, gravity - but
with an eye towards preventing it from happening again in the future,
which, by-the-by is also a good way of learning new things and
broadening one's knowledge. Always assuming the simple answer is the
answer is how some folks have "20 year's experience; unfortunately they
stopped growing after the first year and had to learn year one 20
times." Not, I would quickly point out that I'm pointing fingers at
anyone on this forum, nor do I intend any slight. I'm only saying that
if one always assumes "the problem is more complex than I'm giving it
credit for" one is less likely to be whipsawed by band-aids constantly
popping off hither and yon. We all know people like that who are
constantly amazed by that "Well I don't know why that didn't fix the
problem this time; the last time I had that problem it fixed it right
away." Obviously, they didn't understand the complexity or root cause of
the problem; they probably never will. You don't get the big bucks by
"fixing problems" but by understanding their underlying causes and
crafting solutions that prevent them from ever cropping up again.
--
Paul1307