Recipe 5.5. Cleaning Your Desktop Automatically


Problem

You want to clean out all of your unused desktop icons automatically.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

  1. Right-click on the desktop and choose Properties Desktop Customize Desktop. The Desktop Items dialog box appears.

  2. Click on Clean Desktop Now and click on OK. Icons that you haven't used for the past 60 days will be deleted from your desktop, although you can still run the programs in the normal way.

  3. If you want to clean your desktop of unused icons every 60 days, check the box next to Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days. From then on, every 60 days the wizard will appear, and you'll get a prompt asking you whether you want it to delete your unused icons.

Using the Registry

Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\CleanupWiz. Double-click the NoRun DWORD value, and edit its value to 0. Exit the Registry. The wizard will now run automatically every 60 days. If you want to change the interval at which it automatically cleans your desktop, double-click the Days between clean up DWORD value. Click Decimal, enter a number, click OK, and exit the Registry. The number will be the number of days between automated cleanups.

Discussion

Why clean out your desktop icons? Because your desktop can easily become cluttered with icons that you rarely, if ever use. That clutter means that it will be more difficult for you to find icons to programs that you want to use. You can always clean them out automatically by deleting each one, but that can be a time-consuming process, so the automated clean-up procedure can be a better way to go.

See Also

Recipe 5.1 if you want to delete icons that apparently can't be deleted and Recipe 5.2 to change desktop icons that appear unchangeable



Windows XP Cookbook
Windows XP Cookbook (Cookbooks)
ISBN: 0596007256
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 408

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net