Windows XP Desktop: Arranging & Un-highlighting Icons

[SamOso]

My Samsung NC10 is working great. The most noticeable problem is that all the icons on my desktop became highlighted one day. Ordinarily, if you place a cursor over an icon and click your mouse, that icon becomes highlighted. On my desktop, EVERY icon is permanently highlighted. Is there some way to fix that?

Second question: I can rearange my desktop icons by dragging an icon between other icons. But all the icons remain tightly grouped on the left side of the screen. I’d like to divide the icons into groups. For example, I might put all the browser and e-mail icons in a row, put the multi-media programs in a second row and put all the crapware (e.g. Internet Explorer) in the bottom right corner.

Is there a way to alter the desktops so that the icons can be rearranged at will, similar to a Mac?

Thanks.

[Alfihar]

With regards to the second question.

Right click on the desktop, under “Arrange Icons By” make sure “Auto Arrange” is unchecked. You should then be able to place the icons where you want to on the desktop.

[Becky]

Does this fix your desktop icons problem:

Right-click the desktop and choose properties. Go to the ‘Desktop’ tab and click ‘Customize Desktop’. Go to the ‘Web’ tab. Untick all the boxes and click ‘ok’.

If that doesn’t work, try disabling then re-enabling icon shadows as follows:

Right click “My Computer”, choose “Properties” then go to the “Advanced” tab. Click the “Settings” button under Performance, scroll down and tick “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop”. Click OK, then repeat the above steps but this time re-tick the box and click OK.

Hope one of these solutions helps. 🙂

[SamOso]

Thanks for all the tips. I’ve now rearranged my icons, and unticking a single box under the “Web” tab fixed my other problem.

[Author]

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