How to Change the Icon of any File Type

In This section will show you how you can change the default icon that is displayed for any file type on your computer. Changing the icons is actually very easy; the most difficult part of the process is trying to figure out what icon to use.

Additionally, keep in mind that you can use any of the new high resolution icons that you can download from the sites.

To get started changing your icons, you are going to want to use the Folder Options feature you used in the Changing Default Launch Application.

Follow these steps to Begin:

1. Open up Folder Options again by clicking My Computer. Then when it launches, click the Tools menu bar entry and select Folder Options.
2. Inside Folder Options, click the File Types tab to reveal the list of all of the different file extensions on your computer.
3. Browse through the list and select the extension for which you want to change the icon.
4. Once you have the entry selected, click the Advanced button.

5. On the Edit File Type screen, click the Change Icon button, as shown in Figure below.

6. The Change Icon screen will be displayed.Here, you will be shown various system icons from which you can choose.If you do not find any that you like, just click the Browse button and select an icon that you downloaded on your computer.
7. Once you find the perfect icon,click OK to select the new icon.
8. Then click OK once more to save your changes.

You don't have to reboot after you make your changes, because you will see your changes immediately after you click OK to save them.

Remove Past Notification Icons in Windows Vista

A very useful feature in Windows is the ability to automatically hide system tray icons when they are not in use. The problem is that over time, Explorer caches a list of every single icon that it's ever seen, and your list might grow to hundreds of items that Explorer knows about.

The other issue is that Explorer keeps these items in memory somewhere, so it's also causing bloat, but we can completely reset this list with a little tricky registry editing and recycling Explorer. Note that this will remove any settings you had set for the icons.

To get to the dialog we are talking about, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Properties, then choose the Notification Area tab, and click the Customize button.


Just look at all the items in the list… I don't even have some of those applications installed anymore.

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search box, and then browse down to this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify


Now you will see two entries in the list: IconStreams and PastIconsStream. Select both of them and delete them. (You may want to make a backup with the export function before you do this)

Now we'll need to recycle Explorer.exe by opening up task manager (You can use Ctrl+Shift+Esc), selecting explorer.exe in the list and choosing End Process.
Now go to the File menu of Task Manager, choose New Task and type explorer.exe into the open box. Hit enter, and explorer should restart itself.

Alternate Close Explorer Method

Open the Start menu and then hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys at the same time. Right-click on an empty area of the menu, and you'll see a new option called "Exit Explorer"

The taskbar should completely disappear, and any open folder windows if you are using default explorer settings.

Inspired by: Geek