More questions about the visual part of Vista;-)

When you use big icons, you get a preview of what is inside. If there is several files inside you mostly get this:

But wonderful Vista, you can change what file is used to provide the preview, for example like this:

I love that!

But – I want to keep this kind of preview when I burn files to a data cd.
I figured I need to select an image that is in (one of) the folder(s) that I intend to burn to the CD.
But then I found out, that when I delete thumbnails with Diskcleanup on Drive C (to update the preview and see my changes;-D) the thumbnails on my external drive D also get cleaned up and there is no option to clean up the thumbnails when I choose Drive D to clear.
I take it that means thumbnails are not stored in the folder they’re used for.
That would mean the preview would not end up on my CD when I simple select all the folders I want to burn.
Is there a way to solve this?

Sarah.

Hi Coates,

I use that on my USB stick, is lovely:) But it is not what I meant in this case. I want to keep the foldericon the way it shows up in Vista after I have chosen a file to represent the contents of that folder. I don't think it can be done, but maybe someone has a bright solution;-)

Sarah.

CD for personal use, but I use it not only on my own computer, but elsewhere too.

To get your customized folder icons to show up on a burned disc, the key is the desktop.ini file. This is a hidden file that should be found in any folder with a customized picture. In it, there is a line for "Logo" that points to the image. Normally, this path name is fully qualified, including the drive letter and path. That's not good when moving the disc to different systems as the image won't always be in the same path. However, I just did an experiment and modified the desktop.ini file to use a *relative* path name and it worked. Here is what the desktop.ini inside of the folder looks like:


[ViewState]
Mode=
Vid=
FolderType=Pictures
Logo=StartButtonVistaOrb.png


Copy the hidden desktop.ini file to the disc and the custom image specified for the folder will be known to Windows. But that's only the first step.

Wow - you really dug into this!

First of all, I don't get any thumbs.db, except for when I had ACDSee installed, so I guess there are some apps that still use them, but Vista doesn't use them on it's own.

Secondly, I found a desktop.ini like that in the folder 'pictures' and it runs like this:

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=Pictures
InfoTip=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-12688
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-113
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-236
[LocalizedFileNames]
Sample Pictures.lnk=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21805

But the funny thing is I never use the picturesfolder. Everything is in my Documentsfolder and in there there is no desktop.ini, but I do have it set to viewing images and videos (not to all files), so I have large icons and they give a preview of one or more files inside the subfolders.

Edit: I tested it to be sure, so I gave a folder a specific image to use as content for the icon, but there doesn't appear a desktop.ini. Not in the folder that contains the folder or in the subfolder itself.

However, I think for burning purposes I can use the desktop.ini system by placing a hidden desktop.ini and an icon of my choice in the folder - that should work. Maybe not the same as a folder with a specific content, but I can always create an icon of a folder with that content myself (IcoFX is great - http://icofx.ro/ ). I have about 10 folders in all in mind, so that's still within working range ;-)
I won't do it that way on my downloaded apps folders - that would keep me busy for the next two years LOL

However now you got me curious about the content of that ini file.
When changing the icon on a file it also uses paths like %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll instead of C:\Windows\System32\Shell32.dll
When browsing for an icon I can use set paths like that and it works fine.
Most systemicons are found in shell32.dll and imageres.dll
Other than that I can't provide input.

Goodnight!
Sarah