IP unsets attributes of desktop.ini files

Can lead to disappearing of special behaviour in personal folders

Published on September 21, 2007 By erbkaiser In IconPackager

If I apply a new icon package through IconPackager which includes custom icons for the personal folders like "desktop" and "music", these folders' desktop.ini files lose the system attribute.
This makes them visible even if protected operating system files are set to hidden, and deletable. Deleting one of these files can lead to the loss of special behaviour of these folders, which cannot easily be restored.

If IconPackager edits or (re)creates a desktop.ini, it should get the read-only, system, and hidden attributes set always.

Behaviour seen on Vista 32-bit.

Fix: Open cmd.exe with administrator priviliges on the system drive root (C:\).
Type attrib /s +r +s +h desktop.ini and let it run, ignore any errors.

Comments

erbkaiser

on Jul 21, 2008

This is still not fixed in recent releases. Please Stardock, somehow address this.

Whenever I change my icon package, I see the desktop.ini files reappear on my desktop and in the personal folders. I have written a small batch file that runs the above command for the C drive, which I now must run every time after using Iconpackager.

erbkaiser

on Oct 16, 2008

Bumping this up again.

I know you probably consider this a minor issue, so let me just add the following possible consequence: by making these files visible even though a user has selected to keep system critical files (files flagged as System) hidden, you open up the possibility to accidentally delete these.

And once a desktop.ini of a shell folder like Pictures, Music, or Downloads has been deleted, that folder loses its special icon (if any) and any special functionality.

Please fix it, it can't be THAT hard.

Xyverz

on Jan 14, 2009

I can confirm this behavior on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Neil Banfield

on Jan 14, 2009

I have passed this over to the IP team

bagginz

on Jan 21, 2009

This issue has now been fixed internally and will be included within the next available update.

erbkaiser

on Jan 30, 2009

Excellent, thanks for the update.

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