Why Did Windows Vista's Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?
I've been getting emails left and right from readers complaining that their Music folder icon has turned from the default shiny icon into the generic yellow folder icon. After doing some research I finally have a workaround for this issue.
In Windows, all folders can be customized with whatever icon you want. All you need to do is put a hidden file named desktop.ini into the root of that folder, which tells Windows extra information for the folder including what icon to use.
The problem that people are experiencing is due to the contents of that file being modified somehow and pointing to the wrong icon, as you can see here:
You can normally fix this problem by right-clicking on the folder and choosing properties, and then on the Customize tab you'll see this:
If that section does not exist, however, we'll need to open up that desktop.ini file by pasting the following command into the start menu search or run box:
notepad %USERPROFILE%\music\desktop.ini
You'll see a file that should look exactly like this, but probably does not.
You can usually just replace the contents of that file with the following text:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21790
InfoTip=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-12689
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-108
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-237
Save the file and log off from Windows, and then login again. Your Music folder icon should now look like this:
Hopefully this solves the problem for you!
Update: If you are looking for a folder besides the Music folder, I've created a list of the default settings for every user profile folder.
I did that and ''My Music'' folder didnt change back to the default folder.
i was wondering how do you do that for your downloads folder and my folder got replaced by an album is it still changeable back to normal
Re: Vista music folder getting changed to the generic yellow folder, I did as instructed and nothing happened. Do you have another solution to this irritating quirk?
Can you do this with the downloads folder? Please can you tell us how to change that, or better still, ALL of the icons in the folder?
WORKED! I just searched for 20 minutes trying to change this back and thank god I found your site. I usually don't post on these things and say thanks but this was such a big relief that I had too. It was driving me crazy that it was yellow and all the others were the cool vista kind. Thanks so much, great walkthrough and pictures and guide. Your work is appreciated. Thanks.
(oh btw I think it has to do with using media extenders, they modify the file possibly)
All…. you don't need to log off. Just close Windows Explorer and open it again (click on Start -> [user name]) and you'll see it updated.
Tom…. if you have another user on your PC open up the folder C:\users\[username], and copy the desktop.ini files from any subfolders from which you've got the problem. (e.g. copy desktop.ini from the [username]\Downloads subfolder to your own Downloads subfolder").
If you don't have another user on your PC, create one temporarily - this will create the desktop.ini files you can use for the above procedure.
Note you most likely need to be an Administrator to do this successfully….
Hope that helps,
Chris
this didnt work for me so i kept playing around and i opened the folder through my computer-users-(username) and went into file properties- customise- change icon then hit the rostore default button and it went back
I tried this and it didn't work
Does anyone know the windows location on the HD that contains the correct folder icon?
How do you do it for Desktop Folder and Download folder???
Its much much easier than that.
Right Click, Properties, Customize, Change Icon..
Delete whats in the browse part and replace it with
%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll
And then press enter, all the icons are there to select from.
Didn't work for me either.
it didn't work.
and it's driving me nuts.
Thank you so much It did work pretty well now I finally have my icon back!
happy new year!
Hello everyone! i have found a new an easy way for all those whose problem is still their as it was before.
In order to do this, first copy all the file (no need to copy desktop.ini) from the folder that is having problem to a safe folder.
Now go to your user account panel and switch Guest account to On.
Now switch your system to Guest account.
Go to "Guest" folders and copy "that" folder (itself).
Paste this folder in |(your window drive):\Users\(your personal user account folder)|
Switch back to your account and turn off guest account.
This one works for me.I have done for myself just a min ago.I hope it will solve your problem.
Sometimes the code in the desktop.ini file is correct, but the actual folder attributes aren't.
To correct this, strike [Windows key]+R, type in CMD, press enter, and then in the prompt:
cd music
attrib +r desktop.ini
Because the system will not read the file if the read-only flag has not been set.
If the desktop.ini is correct and it still isn't showing the blue icon, cut the music folder and paste it in another random location and then cut and paste it back in the orginal location. That will get the folder to read the file and attributes correctly. I've done that fix on about 10 vista computers and it works everytime. How that helps.
Changing the ini files worked great for me, thanks heaps mate.
If you cant click the change icon button when you click your user in start. You can go to, My Computer - Users - (your user) - Music and there go to properties and change icon. Sorry for my bad english.. Worked for me!
THANKS FOR THE HELP !
i nearly restored factory settings because of this. THANKS AGAIN SO MUCH !
Just thought id post another solution. i tried both the solution witht the run command and the solution with the Utilities program to return Desktop folder to the right icon. however the problem still remained.
So what i did was delet the desktop folder from my users/Usersname folder, and befor closing it i created a new folder on my desktop, gave it the name Desktop, and custimized/changed the icon through properties to the correct one. then i moved the new Desktop folder to my users/Usersname folder and it was fixed.
after all other solutions failing, this was the only way i could fix it.
Quick. Easy. Fix.
That was EXTREMELY helpfull! I was just "dealing" with a dumb looking yellow folder because I just figured it was another annoying Vista problem that I'd just have to live with. When I finally just googled to maybe redownload it, I found this site. Thanks very much, I'll be checking this site from now on if I come across any new fun Vista troublums.
Vista ps1.
I've tried all of these, and nothing worked, nothing was wrong with my desktop.ini file.
I just thought ''forget it i'll create a new one and see if that can be fixed'
So i hit F2 on it to rename, added a - on the end, hit enter and….
it got automatically renamed right back again and fixed the icon!
Don't forget to go into the properties of your new music folder, and change "Music-" or whatever you have it set to back to "Music," it'll make it much more easier to manage your music since you won't have to move all of it from the old "Music" folder to the new "Music" one.
Ah, yes, I had not realized it had done that as the view in explorer said 'music', and that it had created left the folder physically called C:\Users\Yakumo\Music-, I thought it had renamed it back to what it was.
I tried hitting the 'reset to default' option on the location tab, which caused it to create another 'music' folder with icon, for C:\Users\Yakumo\Music
Which is fine. what wasn't fine was after asking if I wanted it to "move" all the contents of the old location to the new one, which I chose to do, it then COPIED everything, and refused to respond to the cancel button being pressed, and then deleted the original files. WTH?
Very frustrating, especially with a machine with only one drive, this process took several minutes instead of the sub 1 second procedure an actual move operation would have taken.