Hello all,
I know that this is a minor problem, but it annoys me to no end. I keep several Icons on my desktop and the “Control Panel” is one of them …. to me it looks like some 3rd grader made this one, and can’t imagine how the powers that be in Microsoft let this in “7” 64 Home (other than it was some employee’s child who did the design on this) “Oh how cute”… looks like some kind of cartoon character “bob the control panel” So.. has anyone figured how to get the old “Control Panel” icon from Vista back ? Regards Fred

Fred,

Right click on the icon on your desktop and choose Properties, Select the Shortcut tab and choose Change icon. You will be given a large selection to choose from, but these are all from those same guys you mentioned in your post. I would go To Googleand download as many icons as you want, or create your own. I store icons in a folder I label Icons (very creative I know). When you choose Change Icon, browse to the folder you created with the Icon files and choose away to your hearts content. Quite some time ago I found some Celtic Icons I will e-mail to you for your consideration if I can find them. Ted

If you could find out the name of the DLL that contains the icon in Vista, you could copy that file from Vista to some location, such as your home folder, and then use it’s icon (using the method Ted described). Unfortunately I don’t have ready access to Vista (I run 7 and XP) or I would tell you the name of the file (it’s c:windowssystem32imageres.dll in Win 7)

Fred,

Glad it worked for you. I thought the path was the same in Vista, but I also do not have a vista available to check. Take a few minutes to check out some other icons. There is a wealth of them available out there. Have a great day. Ted

You can also get icons by browsing to:- C:Windowssystem32SHELL32.dll it gives a more varied selection.

Fred, W7 and Vista both use the same icons.

Fred, have you been here? http://www.vistaicons.com/download/i143/ivista_icon_pack_2.htm

IrfanView can create icons from a huge variety of images and graphics. If you want custom icons, this is a great tool for creating and saving them. I created a whole Windows folder full of custom icons so that I can distinguish important folders and different USB drive partitions from one another, as well as improve upon shortcut icons such as the one you are unhappy with.

Bob,

Very useful info and a Thumbs Up. I also get bored with the icons the designers have created. I’m wondering if there are other photo manipulating Apps that will do the same thing. Hmmm, more time spent on the PC fooling around. Thanks again.

I’ve already changed a few icons. The system icons had to be changed through Personalize, Change Desktop Icons. This is very cool. I can create all my own customized icons with very little effort. This is going to be fun!

In answer to the question about stand-alone icon editors, yes, there are many of these. I don’t like most of them because they crash a lot, or produce poor results, or are not intuitive to use. The IrfanView method seems to me to pass the KISS test (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

Greenfish Editor (stand-alone, not an installed program) is one which works better than most. (Unfortunately, the program’s Home Page is in Hungarian.) Paint .NET can also save images as icon files, but it is not as simple to use as IrfanView, and it needs .NET Framework.

Nice brain-teaser: change every shortcut icon + its name. Next day try to remember which is which —