Some Desktop Tips

[catacon]

I don't know if these have been posted before (probably have), but I found these kind of cool and used them on my Windows computer.

Remove All Icons

If your like me, you probably don't want a ton of icons all of your desktop, if any. So this tip essentially gets rid of the desktop and just leaves your nice background picture. Note: You will not be able to right-click on the desktop after this, so you have to go to the control panel to change display settings.

1) Open the registry (Start->Run->regedit)
2) Select to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
3) Navigate to Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
4) Right-click and select New->DWORD value
5) Name it "NoDesktop" (no quotes)
6) Right click on "NoDesktop" and select Modify Binary Data
7) Erase everything that you can (there should be 4 zeros you can't erase) and type 3 zeros followed by a one.
8) Hit OK and close the Registry Editor

Restart Explorer Without Leaving Windows

Now in order to see the results of the first tip, you have to restart explorer. You probably do not want to reboot just to do that, so here is a tip to safely do it without leaving Windows. Note: This can be used for anytime you have to restart explorer, not just for the previous tip.

1) Go to Start->Shutdown (Turn Off Computer in XP)
2) While holding Control+Shift+Alt, select Cancel
3) Your Start Menu and Taskbar should now be gone.
4) To restart explorer, open the Task Manager by holding down Control+Shift then hitting Escape
5) The task manager will come up. Select File->New Task(Run...).
6) Type in explorer and click OK.
7) You have now properly restarted explore.

Hope these help some people. It can make the desktop top look really nice.

[guruboy]

The restart windows explorer one is quite helpful, thanks.

About removing all the icons, I found a different approach on a web page called "7 steps to turn your PC into a mac" or something like that. The site involved downloading Stardock, a utility that essentially gives you a dock like the one in Mac OS. So, what I did with my computer is delete every shortcut on the desktop (or move it to the dock) and change the key in the registry that allows you to delete the recycle bin from the desktop (you can still have the recycle bin in the dock.) Now I can have my nice background, and for most programs I just move my mouse up to the top of the screen, the dock appears, and I click the program I want. I really like it. Plus this allows you to right click the desktop. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[catacon]

Yeah, I found the one that deletes the recycle bin. I will post it if I can find it again

[Panama Red]

Hmmm, in XP if you right click the desk top>Arrange icons by>uncheck Show Desktop icons = they all disappear including the recycle bin. You can bring them back the same way without editing the registry too.