Vista - How do I customize?

My questions about the Windows Vista Operating System are: 1) On the Taskbar, on the Desktop Toolbar: How do I permanently delete the Internet Explorer shortcut? It keep magically re-appearing every time I delete it. Also, how do I change the order in which the Shortcut Icons appear on the Desktop Toolbar? I keep dragging them around, but they refuse to be placed the order I want them to appear. 2) How do I change the Menu Bar background color to a color different than the general window color? Win98 allowed you to do it, I can't seem to figure out how to on XP or Vista. 3) How do you change the backgrounds inside folders? 4) Where is the Extentions tab in folder options? How can I change the Icons associated with file extentions? 5) How do I change the icons used for HDD and Folders and other system Icons to personal ones?

Hello Stray,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

Take a look through the Tutorial section for a bit on most of your questions. Afterwards, post back with what you could not find.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/

Shawn

Ok, I looked through the tutorial trying a variety of keywords pertaining to my questions, and it seems that either my all of my issues are not covered or I just couldn't find them in there. There seems to be no information about the Desktop Toolbar at all. Any information about Internet Explorer shortcuts is pertaining to the "creation of", not "deletion of". I tried to find information about menu background color, but the only information about menus was how to enable the menu bar. Backgrounds inside folders does not seem to be covered, looked under "background" and "Folder", didn't find any information. Maybe I missed it. The information on file extentions only shows how to change extentions, not how to change the icons associated with those extentions. Changing the HDD icons in My Computer and the Folder icons throughout the system is not covered in there either.

Control Panel Desktop Icon
Color Scheme

To change Windows Bar colour:
Right Click on Desktop > Personalize > Window Color and Appearance


To show file extrensions

Open folder ,press Alt > Tools(appears at top of folder a la Vista) > Folder Options > View > untick Hide Extensions for known file types

arent the icons dependant on what program a particular file format is associated with?

You can't change the backgrounds a window (at least not via Vista itself), you can download a program that will allow you to do so.

Ok Stray,

See if unchecking the IE7 icon here will help:
Desktop Icons

You can open the folder for the Desktop Toolbar, Toolbar for the Desktop , and see if changing the sort order in Option Four of this tutorial will help.
Column - Customize

You can use the Advanced Appearance setting for the Menu item to change it's color in step 6C of this tutorial. The Title Bar items can also be changed to if you wanted to.

Advanced Appearance

You cannot do this in Vista without some 3rd party program installed like Stardock's WindowBlinds.
Stardock.com - Your Edge In Software

[quote]
4) Where is the Extentions tab in folder options? How can I change the Icons associated with file extentions? [/b]

This feature has been removed in Vista. The only option to change file extension associations are now:

Unassociate File Extention Type

and

Default Programs

HDD icon:
Drive Icon Change

Control Panel icons:
Control Panel Icons

Folder and File icons:
Shortcut Folder or File Icon Change

and

Folder Icon Change

Icons for file extension types:
You will have to use a 3rd party program for this like Stardock's IconPackager.
Stardock.com - Your Edge In Software


Hope this helps,
Shawn

OK, first, there is no IE shortcut to "uncheck", I looked there several times to try that before looking online for a solution to this. I currently do not have the Internet Exporer icon on my desktop, but it keeps reappearing on the Toolbar every time I delete it. Usually after a reboot, or because I "hide" my taskbar, it will sink down, and disappear, then when I pop it back up, there is IE shortcut again. It's ridiculous. Maybe a registry edit for this? I have no idea where to look to change this.

As far as the desktop folder, the My Computer, Documents, Network icons are not in the folder, and there is no "do not sort" option, to allow me to drag and arrange the icons along the toolbar in the order I want them. I was able to drag, and arrange my icons in preferential order in 98. The Quicklaunch bar will allow re-orginization of shortcuts by dragging them into place easily.

Advanced Appearance- I already used this feature. It is how I got my colors adjusted in the first place, but Vista uses the same color for both the window, and menubar. I was able to choose grey for my windows/dialog boxes, and have the menu toolbar in black on my old OS. Is this feature broken? It still won't do it.

The extensions feature was removed in Vista? Why on Earth would they do that? I used that feature in Windows alot, to change the icons of many extension types.

For the HDD icon-I didn't know it would require registry editing to change those icons, and I couldn't find that in the tutorial itself when I looked, I appreciate the link. I used that information, and was able to get exactly what I was looking for.

For Folder Icons- I am not going to click properties on hundreds of folder icons in my computer and change them all to the one Icon I want to represent a folder. I am talking about changing the icon the system uses to show an open or closed folder. I imagine it will require registry changes similar to that used for the HDD.

I will try this 3rd party software you reccomend, I didn't know it took 3rd party software to adjust windows settings anymore. This seems like a convoluted way to do something that was simple in old versions of Windows.

I appreciate the help here, Microsoft made everything more convoluted than it was before, and those of us that know how to do these things in past versions are pretty much lost on this new "organization" they threw at us. It seems that every time they make a new OS, more and more of the customization options available to us gets smaller and smaller. I just want a simple old school windows look, without all that aero stuff.

Thanks again.

Stray,

Can you send a image of where the IE7 shortcut is to help clarify? The taskbar is a different area than a desktop toolbar.

Usually you will need to use the Windows Classic color scheme to be able to change all of the colors for windows. However, that color scheme is not nice like Windows Aero.

I suppose that you can blame the antitrust lawsuits on why some of these extra customization features are being removed from Microsoft's OS's.

Shawn

Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar, Brink. IE will keep reappearing there if you delete it....

DOH!

Thank you John.

Stray,

I tested this on my system, and deleting the IE7 shortcut from the Quick Launch folder location, in Method One of Option Three in the tutorial below, removed it for me without coming back. I tried a restart, logging off and on, and with autohide on and off. It did not come back for me.

Quick Launch

Hope this helps you,
Shawn