This is for the techies out there. The bar at the bottom of my screen is filled with shortcuts, half of which look like boring yellow folders. Any recomendations for an icon-editor? Nothing fancy, preferably free or with a good long trial period. Thanks, Cricket

Icons are just bitmaps, you can make them in paintbrush and rename them from .bmp to .ico. You have to make them the right size though, and I can't remember how big that is, probably 24x4 or 32x32. You might be able to find something more specific on download.com, but I can't recommend anything...

Thanks for the suggestion, Meridian, but it doesn't work. Tried MS Paint, the free one with Windows 2000. Won't save as .ico. When I save as bmp and change the extension, then change the shortcut to use that icon, I get something that looks decidedly random. And, when I try to open a .ico file with MS Paint, it says it can't read the file type, even after I change the extension to .bmp. So, I'm open to other suggestions. I really don't like just trying random ones from downloads.com or tucows -- we've had enough trouble with the system after that sort of exploration that I'm gunshy. I prefer to use ones friends recommend. Cricket

You could save time by searching for desktop icons. Download them into a separate folder, so you'll know where they are. Then, right-click on the folder and select "properties." From there, click "customize." At the bottom is "Change icon." Click on it, and then on "browse." Find the folder you saved the icons to, and select one of them. For some folders, such as "My Pictures," the process is a tad different. Right-click the folder, and at the bottom is a button that says "Change icon." It's the same thing after that.

I probably should have said that you need to save it as 16 colours or 256 colours. The default seems to be 24-bit bitmap and I don't think that will work. But I've just tried this here and 16 colour and 256 colour both work fine as icons once renamed to .ico.

Actually, what version of Paint do you have there?

Hmmm, well, I've tried this on some more icons on my PC now and I haven't had a problem with most of them in Paint after renaming them as .bmp. But in Paint Shop Pro, I can't open some of them, and if I edit, save and rename those in Paint, they come out a different size and don't look quite the same. The colours come out duller, so I assume it's losing some pallette information. So, they're not as much the same as I thought. But only some of them. Perhaps it depends on the way the original icon was created? If your spouse has a copy of Dev Studio, some versions of that have an icon editor.

This is making me look really obsessive about icons, isn't it? But someone asked me the same question at work today, since not many of us there have icon editors either.... Coo.. 4 replies in a row from me. I really am looking obsessive about this...

Paint, version 5, 1999. We've got Dev Studio, but it's not installed. I remember it mucked things up, so I've no incentive to put it back on. Think I was saving as 24-bit bitmap. I'll try the other options. Thanks for the ideas!

Okay, seems the problem is the background colour. If I leave it white, it turns black. Other than that, the 16-colour bitmap seems to work well enough. Thanks!