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How to Change the Drive Icon in Windows Vista and Windows 7

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Modz 4 Higher

Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2012
Location
Houston, TX
In the Alternative Modding Section a thread titled "I Had To Share This" was made in regards to a 'stuffed beaver' being made into a computer. In the same thread another member posted a picture of a potaThis guide contains Registry changes. Do so at your own risk.
Back up the registry before making any changes.to, yes the kind you eat, hooked up to his computer via USB as a Hard Drive. The member also posted a picture of the Local Disk icon and it too was a 'potato.'

It made a few members very curious as how to change the drive icon to be what you want it to be, so here is a simple How-To on doing this.

This guide contains Registry changes. Do so at your own risk.
Back up the registry before making any changes.

Myself nor Overclockers.com will be held responsible for any damage done to your computer, due to Registry Editing.

First thing to do, or what i would do, is make a new folder for your icons in a place of your choosing(ie: desktop, my pictures etc.) and name it "HardDriveIcons".

Now, collect your icons/images and place them in the "HardDriveIcons" folder.
Note: All icons should be 256x256 in size. Also, the file extension must be an .ico. If you have an image that is a .png it will not work. However, there are programs out there that offer 30 day trials which allow you to convert from .png to .ico.

Next, go to start and in the search field type in "Regedit" and open it. Then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software then you will look for another folder labeled Classes. If you do not have this folder, simply right click, go to "New" and then "Key" and type it in.

Once that is done, expand "Classes" and scroll down to "Applications" (if that key does not exist, create it by right clicking on "Classes", then "New", then "Key", name it, then hit Enter)

Under "Applications" expand "Explorer.exe", then "Drives" (if neither of those sub-keys exist, create "Explorer.exe" by right clicking "Applications", then "New", then "Key", name it, then hit Enter, create "Drives" by right clicking "Explorer.exe", then "New", then "Key", name it, then hit Enter)

Now, under "Drives" create new keys for each drive using the drive letter as the name, then under each drive, create a new sub-key and name it "DefaultIcon"

Defaulticon is case sensitive and has to be ALL ONE WORD.

Now, to change the drive icons:

Click on "DefaultIcon" and in the right pane, right click on (Default), then click on "Modify", then in the "Value Data" box, enter the location of your hard drive icons,
ie: J:/HardDriveIcons/black.ico Depending where you saved the icons initially.

That's it, you are done:D Hope this helps.

-M4H
 
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