They were wrong with Vista - maybe here, too...
April 12, 2009 9:24 PM Subscribe
Custom Folder Icons on Network Shares - Microsoft says it can't be done... are they right?
I'm trying to figure out how to use custom folder icons in Windows XP*. While getting them working on the local machine drives is fine, I can't get them to work on Samba shares, either on a mapped drive (y:\samba\share) or a standard SMB share (\\samba\share).
Hunting round, I've found an MS knowledgebase article here, which simply states that the option is "not available" under these circumstances.
Is anyone aware of any reg hacks/3rd party software that will enable custom icons on network share folders? Failing that, are there any workarounds - the best I can come up with is a local folder with customised-icon individual links to the samba folders - rather cumbersome, especially when I change the remote folder structure in any way...
* Client machine is XP Service Pack 2, Server is Ubuntu 8.10, in case that's relevant.
I'm trying to figure out how to use custom folder icons in Windows XP*. While getting them working on the local machine drives is fine, I can't get them to work on Samba shares, either on a mapped drive (y:\samba\share) or a standard SMB share (\\samba\share).
Hunting round, I've found an MS knowledgebase article here, which simply states that the option is "not available" under these circumstances.
Is anyone aware of any reg hacks/3rd party software that will enable custom icons on network share folders? Failing that, are there any workarounds - the best I can come up with is a local folder with customised-icon individual links to the samba folders - rather cumbersome, especially when I change the remote folder structure in any way...
* Client machine is XP Service Pack 2, Server is Ubuntu 8.10, in case that's relevant.
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I figured I'd post a response in case someone searches for this in the future.
OK, I did a bit more research on this and decided that perhaps icons weren't the right way to go, and that thumbnails were perhaps a more promising route. A spot of Googling brought me to this forum thread, discussing removing the square yellow folder border on a directory in thumbnail view.
The technique isn't for the faint of heart - you'll need to either edit your existing shell32.dll file and delete the background folder icons, or locate and download the pre-modified one (it was available a few weeks ago, but I can't remember where I found it - I think I had to dig around a few different threads on the forum above to find a working download link). Either way, make sure you back up your original first!
A few notes - firstly, it affects all the thumbnail views on your computer, not just the networked directories I was asking about - this tradeoff was acceptable to me. Secondly, the technique insists you need to turn off Thumbnail cacheing and take the performance hit, but mine works fine with it switched on. Thirdly, after playing with the "3D" settings in Display Properties->Appearance->Advanced, I decided to retain the settings almost as-is and accept the light grey border around my thumbnails - the alternative was to see numerous effects on other windows bars and dialogue boxes.
To be honest, this whole thing is a bit of a hack job with not entirely perfect results, but for me, it works OK for now - once I move from XP then I think the original issue will largely go away (I hope).
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 9:29 AM on May 9, 2009