changing the icon for folders in explorer

Anyone know of a free program to do this..

This is one (from cnet), but 20 bucks, ehhh..

http://oop.rosweb.ru/users/a/artem/index.html
http://oop.rosweb.ru/users/a/artem/afx.html

Why hasn't M thought/implemented of
this?????????????????????????

Versile <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
You don't reaally need a program to do this.

This is an example using a file (shell32.dll) that is certain to be on
your computer. Following the steps will change a "regular" folder icon
from a plain tan folder icon into a Globe icon. Also included in
information on how to use your own IconFile, since Windows does not ship
with any colored folder icons.

- Create a New Folder
- Click Start > Run, type CMD, and in the command windows, type
attrib +s {FolderName}
or
Right-click on the New Folder, choose Properties, in the Attributes
section click Read-only, click Apply, click OK to Apply Changes to this
Folder only
- Right-click in the file list control area of the folder in question and
choose New > Text Document
- Double-click New Text Document and add the following three lines:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=C:\WINNT\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=13

- Choose File > Save As... and in the File name box type the following
name, with the double-quotes: "desktop.ini"

- Click Save, and then close desktop.ini. You can delete "New Text
Document"

- Refresh Explorer using the F5 key. You may need to do this several
times before the new icon displays. And if the icon has not changed
after 4 or 5 refreshes, close all running instances of Explorer, and
then open Explorer.

To customize the folder icon using your own icon follow these rules to
edit the values in your desktop.ini.

IconFile = The file name that contains the icon to show for the folder. It
can be an ICO or a BMP file, as well as EXE or DLL file that contain
icons. You must use the fully qualified path unless the IconFile is in the
same folder as the desktop.ini file.

IconIndex = The index of the icon in the file just specified. Set it to
zero if you are using an ICO or BMP file. If you are loading the icon from
a file that contains multiple icons, such as EXEs or DLLs, use the ordinal
0-based position of the icon within the file. In the above example, we
used an icon in shell32.dll with an ordinal 0-based position of 13.

For more information on the desktop.ini see:

Customizing Folders with Desktop.ini
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/custom.asp>

Customizing your Computer in Desktop.ini
<http://www.geocities.com/registrylord/desktop.txt>

--
Gary L. Smith gls432@yahoo.com
Columbus, Ohio

Gary, can this be done for a drive too? Like the CD is
assigned ordinal 11 aparently...


ll_basics_extending/custom.asp>

ver <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
Setting up a custom icon for a drive is a bit different. That's done by
modifying the registry key for the specific drive under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\MountPoints.
There will be an entry for each drive defined in your system. For
example, I have a Zip drive which is assigned drive letter F. I don't use
any Iomega software, but wanted to display the Zip drive icon and a label
more specific than the default. This is accomplished by adding two keys
-- DefaultIcon and DefaultLabel -- below HKCU\Software\...\MountPoints\F.
The keys are given a default value of type REG_SZ containing the
appropriate text. DefaultIcon contains the fully-qualified name of the
icon file, "D:\Data\Config\ZIPDR.ICO", and DefaultLabel contains the text
to be displayed, "Zip Drive".

The same technique should work for a CD drive. You may need to reboot
after adding the entries to make them show up.

--
Gary L. Smith gls432@yahoo.com
Columbus, Ohio