Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

If you like to rearrange your desktop shortcuts and change your wallpaper often, IconRestorer would be a useful utility for you. It allows you to save the layout of your desktop icons and the current wallpaper. Then, you can change the layout and the wallpaper and return to the original settings you saved when you want to.

Download IconRestorer from http://fsl.sytes.net/download.html.

Once you have installed IconRestorer and run it for the first time, a dialog box displays asking to select your language. Select the desired language from the drop-down list and click OK.

Next the IconRestorer Help screen displays. You can read it through now, or you can access it again later in the program. Click OK to close the Help screen.

The main program window displays with the Manual Actions tab active. To create a backup of your current desktop layout, click in the edit box labeled Type your backup note here (below the Save current desktop layout button) and type a short description for your layout. This text displays on the name of the backup on the Backups tab. Once you have specified your description, click the Save current desktop layout button.

A dialog box displays once the current desktop layout has been successfully saved. Click OK to close this dialog box.

To restore the last layout you saved, click the Restore last saved desktop layout button on the Manual Actions tab. A dialog box displays asking you to confirm the request to restore the layout. Click Yes to continue with the restore process.

If you have the Auto arrange icons option on for your desktop, the following message displays. You must turn off the Auto arrange icons option to be able to restore a backup.

To turn off the Auto arrange icons option, right-click on your desktop and select View | Auto arrange icons from the pop-up menu.

If you want to restore a different layout besides the last one you saved, click the Backups tab. All your backed up layouts are listed on the left side of the window. The backups are grouped by the resolutions that were active when each backup was created.

Select the backup you want to restore from the list and click the Restore selected layout button. You are asked to confirm the action as mentioned above. Use the buttons on the right to Rename, Delete, Export, and Import the selected backup.

Use the buttons on the right to Rename, Delete, Export, and Import the selected backup.

NOTE: In the free version of this software you can only save two backups. If you make a donation to the creators of this software, Freesoftland (http://fsl.sytes.net/index.html), you can obtain a version of this software that allows you to have unlimited number of backups for each resolution and the Auto Save feature is also available, allowing you to save layouts automatically using a specified time interval from 1 second to 99 hours.

Check the Show preview check box to display a preview of the selected layout backup to the left of the window.

The List view Desktop check box on the Manual Actions tab allows you to change the icon view on the desktop to a list view.

When you click the check box to turn it on, the following dialog box displays recommending that you make a backup of your desktop layout before switching to List View mode. Click Yes if you are ready to switch to List View mode.

Here a is a sample of List View mode:

The Options tab allows you to turn on and off various settings, which are described below the settings when you click the Click to show contextual help arrow.

Click the Click to show contextual help arrow to display help that describes each of the settings available on the Options tab. This area also displays help for the other tabs when each one is active.

by Lori Kaufman