How to change drive icons

So you want to change your drive icons but it is not that easy as in case of folder, you have to edit some registry settings for that.

The following tutorial shows you how to change the drive icon

Before starting backup you registry to know how to visit here

Understand what registry is from here

1. go to start>Run
2. type Regedit and hit enter
3. now navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
4. Now right click on explorer key and select new> key
5. give the name to the newly created key as DriveIcons
6. now your path would look like this
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons
7. Now again right click on DriveIcons key and select new>key
8. Now this is important key, the name of this key should be the drive letter of the drive whose icon you want to change in order to change drive icon of D drive give the newly created key name D
9. After this your key should look like this
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\P
10. Now again right click on D and select new > key
11. Give this newly created key name DefaultIcon
12. Now on the right pane you will see a default string
13. Double click on it to edit it
14. here type the full path of the icon for e.g.
%SystemRoot%\\system32\\SHELL32.dll,3
or
c:\icon\flash.ico
15. Click F5



Now you are done, in the above given way you can add icon to any drive just add the drive letter as new key as i have done for D drive you can do it for any drive you want.

for those who don't want to do above process i have posted the code for registry file below which will change your C,D,E and F drive icon to new folder icon.
Follow the below steps

1. open notepad
2. copy paste the below given code as it is
[code]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\C\DefaultIcon]
@="%SystemRoot%\\\\system32\\\\SHELL32.dll,3"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\D\DefaultIcon]
@="%SystemRoot%\\\\system32\\\\SHELL32.dll,3"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\E\DefaultIcon]
@="%SystemRoot%\\\\system32\\\\SHELL32.dll,3"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\F\DefaultIcon]
@="%SystemRoot%\\\\system32\\\\SHELL32.dll,3"

[/code]

3. Save the file as drive.reg in desktop
4. now double click on it a confirmation dialog box will appear whaich will ask you do you want to merge the registry click on yes

Posted in: How to Recipies