Confusing array of taskbar icons for Win Explorer

[jsteph]

Hi all,
Is there a way--aside from hacking dozens of entries in the registry--to simply have *all* windows explorer taskbar icons look the same? I don't even care which one of the dozen or so that I've seen--just so it's the same one.

The issue is that it's tedious to look at the taskbar and think I'm going to maximize an RDP session when--Ooops--that's not my RDP session--it's the windows explorer icon when the 'my computer' folder happens to be selected. And so on.

Thanks for any help--I'm sure this can be accomplished by editing the default icon in dozens of registry keys, but I'm just wondering if somewhere in the 'appearance' settings or something that it would be a single-checkbox option.
--Jim

 

[flyboytim]

I doubt it, without a lot of hacking. Explorer.exe contains 39 image files (icons, bitmaps etc), Shell32.dll contains 350! TSWorkspace.dll which opens the remote desktop connections has 4 icons.

Your best bet, IMHO is to open up the Control Panel, "All Control Panel Items", select the "Taskbar and Start Menu" control.

Uncheck the "Use Small Icons" box, and under "Taskbar Buttons", select the "Always combine, hide labels" option.

That way, all the explorer buttons should be larger and thus visible, but stacked together to reclaim space, and hovering the cursor over these should enable you to select what you want from the menu that appears.

I say "should", because your desktop theme may not work like that! I am using Windows Classic, with transparency and Aero effects off since I do not have resources to spare on my Windows 7 virtual machine.

In the end it is a matter of choice for you.

 

[linney]

What I find that suits me is in Start Menu/ Properties/ Taskbar, setting the option for "Use Small Icons", and to have the Taskbar button set to "Never Combine". This is also in combination with keeping unused windows from collecting along the Taskbar as much as possible.

If you cant read the actual written description of any Taskbar button, just hovering the Mouse cursor over the button will display an image of the related window. Clicking on that image opens that window.