desktop icons rearranged

When I turned on my system today, I found the desktop icons had been
rearranged.

No settings have been altered. "Auto-arrange" is still "off" and
"arrange by grid" is still "on". The new arrangement is random and
follows none of the patterns that would be obtained by choosing an
option in "Arrange icons by. . .". I had the icons arranged by function
and the recycle bin was in the lower right. Now the icons are totally
random, although still by grid, but the recycle bin has moved to the
upper left.

The system is 10 months old and has been defragged and cleaned (using
XP's utilities) once since new. Scans with Norton AV, Ad-Aware and
Spybot reveal nothing. I have had no operating issues or glitches until
now.

Could someone offer an explanation for why this occurred and a
suggestion for keeping it from reoccurring?

Thank You

Jim Murphy

Unless it happens again, I don't think you need to worry;
probably just a "glistch".

However, if in ten months you have only defragged and cleaned
once time, you are way overdue and it's possible but not likely
this caused the glitch. If you surf much and use the computer
every day, the defrag and cleaning are going to take some time,
but you should still do it. Clean, Rest then defrag. If you get
into the habit of doing them once a week or every two weeks
you'll find they run quickly and don't get in the way as they
will with having waited so long. A really badly fragmented disc
can someteims cause some strange problems and can slow the
computer to a crawl.

Pop



"Jim Murphy" wrote in message
...
| When I turned on my system today, I found the desktop icons had
been
| rearranged.
|
| No settings have been altered. "Auto-arrange" is still "off"
and
| "arrange by grid" is still "on". The new arrangement is random
and
| follows none of the patterns that would be obtained by choosing
an
| option in "Arrange icons by. . .". I had the icons arranged by
function
| and the recycle bin was in the lower right. Now the icons are
totally
| random, although still by grid, but the recycle bin has moved
to the
| upper left.
|
| The system is 10 months old and has been defragged and cleaned
(using
| XP's utilities) once since new. Scans with Norton AV, Ad-Aware
and
| Spybot reveal nothing. I have had no operating issues or
glitches until
| now.
|
| Could someone offer an explanation for why this occurred and a
| suggestion for keeping it from reoccurring?
|
| Thank You
|
| Jim Murphy
|

If fragmentation has reached the point where the defragger won't finish or
you want to save a lot of time, try Diskeeper 9. You can download an
evaluation copy. Either Home or Pro version will do. It is extremely fast
and can handle all sorts of knotty situations. Just Google for Diskeeper.

"Pop" wrote in message
...
Unless it happens again, I don't think you need to worry;
probably just a "glistch".

However, if in ten months you have only defragged and cleaned
once time, you are way overdue and it's possible but not likely
this caused the glitch. If you surf much and use the computer
every day, the defrag and cleaning are going to take some time,
but you should still do it. Clean, Rest then defrag. If you get
into the habit of doing them once a week or every two weeks
you'll find they run quickly and don't get in the way as they
will with having waited so long. A really badly fragmented disc
can someteims cause some strange problems and can slow the
computer to a crawl.

Pop



"Jim Murphy" wrote in message
...
| When I turned on my system today, I found the desktop icons had
been
| rearranged.
|
| No settings have been altered. "Auto-arrange" is still "off"
and
| "arrange by grid" is still "on". The new arrangement is random
and
| follows none of the patterns that would be obtained by choosing
an
| option in "Arrange icons by. . .". I had the icons arranged by
function
| and the recycle bin was in the lower right. Now the icons are
totally
| random, although still by grid, but the recycle bin has moved
to the
| upper left.
|
| The system is 10 months old and has been defragged and cleaned
(using
| XP's utilities) once since new. Scans with Norton AV, Ad-Aware
and
| Spybot reveal nothing. I have had no operating issues or
glitches until
| now.
|
| Could someone offer an explanation for why this occurred and a
| suggestion for keeping it from reoccurring?
|
| Thank You
|
| Jim Murphy
|

I see that this is still a "feature" of windows. ;-)
Numerous times i have had it happen on Win 98 and Win98 SE, and have then
rearranged them only to have it happen shortly again. It usually results
from a hard crash. But has at other times too -- I once saw them jamming
lefthand during an orderly shutdown.
Always, without fail, if I mention it to the "knowledgeable" I am told that
I must have done something, like clicked on "rearrange icons".
The fact that this is not true never deters the knowledgeable from insisting
that *I* did something.

J


On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 18:43:50 -0500, (Jim Murphy)
wrote:

When I turned on my system today, I found the desktop icons had been
rearranged.

No settings have been altered. "Auto-arrange" is still "off" and
"arrange by grid" is still "on". The new arrangement is random and
follows none of the patterns that would be obtained by choosing an
option in "Arrange icons by. . .". I had the icons arranged by function
and the recycle bin was in the lower right. Now the icons are totally
random, although still by grid, but the recycle bin has moved to the
upper left.

The system is 10 months old and has been defragged and cleaned (using
XP's utilities) once since new. Scans with Norton AV, Ad-Aware and
Spybot reveal nothing. I have had no operating issues or glitches until
now.

Could someone offer an explanation for why this occurred and a
suggestion for keeping it from reoccurring?

Thank You

Jim Murphy

Thanks for the replys. The cleaning I mentioned occurred only about 3
weeks ago after I finally decided (after much deliberation) that it
would not be a good idea to try to delete files in C:Windows\temp or in
other temp folders manually. I did recover a good bit of space doing
that. But the defrag that I did a month ago showed the hard drive to be
in rather good order and not in great need of attention.

I will, however, put the system on a regular schedule of cleaning and
defragging and hope that the icon adventure was just a hiccup.

~Jim Murphy

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 12:35:15 -0500, J wrote:

Numerous times i have had it happen on Win 98 and Win98 SE, and have then
rearranged them only to have it happen shortly again. It usually results
from a hard crash. But has at other times too -- I once saw them jamming
lefthand during an orderly shutdown.
Always, without fail, if I mention it to the "knowledgeable" I am told that
I must have done something, like clicked on "rearrange icons".
The fact that this is not true never deters the knowledgeable from insisting
that *I* did something.

I'll cast my vote with your observation of this happening for no apparent
reason. I gave up a long time ago on special icon arrangements on the
desktop due to these resets. Instead, I use folders to group icons. Or use
one of the Sort choices to quickly locate a desktop item that I want to
use.

Many that prefer to keep their groupings intact use third party programs.
I've never tried them as I would rather not run extra software for this. At
least there are tools tool available for those that prefer to keep their
desktop arrangements constant from one startup to the next.

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows XP Shell/User

This program works beautifully.
http://home.comcast.net/~ezwaretech/index.html

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 15:17:17 -0600, Sharon F
wrote:

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 12:35:15 -0500, J wrote:

Numerous times i have had it happen on Win 98 and Win98 SE, and have then
rearranged them only to have it happen shortly again. It usually results
from a hard crash. But has at other times too -- I once saw them jamming
lefthand during an orderly shutdown.
Always, without fail, if I mention it to the "knowledgeable" I am told that
I must have done something, like clicked on "rearrange icons".
The fact that this is not true never deters the knowledgeable from insisting
that *I* did something.

I'll cast my vote with your observation of this happening for no apparent
reason. I gave up a long time ago on special icon arrangements on the
desktop due to these resets. Instead, I use folders to group icons. Or use
one of the Sort choices to quickly locate a desktop item that I want to
use.

Many that prefer to keep their groupings intact use third party programs.
I've never tried them as I would rather not run extra software for this. At
least there are tools tool available for those that prefer to keep their
desktop arrangements constant from one startup to the next.

Hi,
I use Enterra Icon Keeper Deluxe. It's very helpfull tool.
The Deluxe-version release of a well known Enterra Icon Keeper utility
has been awarded by "Editor's Choice" and "Five Stars" from various
software catalogs. There are reasons for this.

Enterra Icon Keeper Deluxe provides for grouping various programs by
several profiles. Programs that are constantly in use can be included
into several profiles at a time. Which is important is that the system
is not burdened with virtual desktops. You still have a single desktop
that immediately becomes different after two mouse clicks. The utility
has preserved one of the most demanded functions from the previous
version - the ability to quickly restore icons positions on the
desktop after failures. Often loading in safe mode and full-screen
games and applications lead to "piling" of all the icons. This utility
solves the issue.

It really helps to keep order on desktop and resolves some problems
which I can not resolve without it.

Find what you want to see and save your time!

More at http://www.enterra-soft.com/products...xe/index.shtml