Sort order of the desktop icon

I noticed that the sort order for the icons on my desktop is a little strange.  When I sort by alphabetically by name, they go through the alphabet once, then again in alphabetical order.  In other words, there are two sets of icons sorted in alphabetical order.  I had this problem on my previous PC, which ran from Windows XP.  Now that I have a new PC running Vista Home Premium, the problem persists.  Can I have some kind of installation or configuration problem?

I searched the Knowledge Base Microsoft and the Internet, for this problem, but found nothing.

Thank you

El_Abuelo

What determines what type of folder is assigned a specific icon?  (The shortcut properties seem to indicate that property may have something to do with it.)

It is normally determined by the installer that created the shortcut in the first place.  Most software publishers are lazy and will place a single shortcut in % PUBLIC%\Desktop, which will appear on the desktop for everyone if you have multiple users.  Unfortunately, if a user removes the shortcut it will disappear from all the world office too.  The solution is to manually copy in all the individual desktop folder and then delete the original.

All of the shortcuts that you you do it manually (for example, by right - dragging a file to the desktop) will appear in your folder %USERPROFILE%\Desktop and therefore appear to you and not to other users.

Of course, if you are the only user on this computer, none of the foregoing is of no interest to you.  In this case, if you want everything sorted alphabetically, choose one of the two locations and manually move everything else.  Given that %PUBLIC%\Desktop is most software installation uses, it will probably be the best choice, by remembering that if you manually create the shortcuts, you must manually move them yourself or they will be out of use again.

Another thing to watch is installers of software that prompts you to install for 'all users' or 'me' (or words to that effect).  The option all users will put the shortcut to the Public folder. the just me option will use your user profile folder.

Tags: Windows

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