If windows is improperly shut down, or explorer crashes then the icon positions are not saved, and upon next reboot it places known icons in their locations, then stacks the rest in an auto-arranged grid. IIRC there was a command you could use that would cause explorer to save the current state (including icon positions) so that if it later crashed then it would place them correctly. I've long since forgotten that, though, and perhaps I'm just imagining it. I recall that when I had the icons perfect, I would shut the computer down and restart it so explorer would save the positions, and later crashes wouldn't affect it (it would go back to the last saved good position) Your best bet is to either 1) live with it (annoying if you have more than 20 icons or so) 2) Set them all up and then restart the computer (may not work) 3) Use one of the _many_ freely available programs designed to resolve this problem On a side note, my current work display is recently completely filled with icons. 408 icons on dual displays. Time to do some spring cleaning... Good luck! -Adam On 4/10/07, Marcel Duchamp wrote: > How to stop WindowsXP from re-arranging desktop icons? > > ... and yes, I already have unchecked AUTO-ARRANGE and ALIGN-TO-GRID as > well. I have two systems; one continually does this and the other never > does. > > Frankly, it's annoying to download something to the desktop and have to > search through the icons to figure out where it ended up because Windows > thinks it should continually re-arrange everything. > > It's a little thing; but then, it's the little things in life that bug > us the most, no? > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Moving in southeast Michigan? Buy my house: http://ubasics.com/house/ Interested in electronics? Check out the projects at http://ubasics.com Building your own house? Check out http://ubasics.com/home/ -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist