Changing icons of default live folders with thumbnail

Hello everyone :)

I come with a question to which at this point I am not sure if there is an answer.

Back when I had Windows 7 I used Stardock IconPackager to change the icons on my pc, included the ones of the thumbnailed folders, and it worked quite well.

Since the program is not compatible with Win 10 I've been trying to do this manually but haven't been successful as of yet.
Spent all day reading the old threads on the Win7 Forums, and followed different methods, such as:

Folder Icon - Change Windows 7 Default Folder Icon - Windows 7 Help Forums
(but it only worked for empty folders or only in small, list or details view, just as the warning says).

Then I tried this more advanced one:
Folder Icon - Change Default Icon - Windows 7 Help Forums
and I think I've done everything correctly because if I use Resource Hacker to check imageres.dll under both System32 and Syswow64, the custom icon shows as you can see on the screen:



I replaced 3, 4, 5 (back), 6 (front) and 162 (full).

Obviously I have rebuilt the icon cache and used cleanup to delete old thumbnails and restarted.. It worked but weirdly, for instance I had my "Pictures" folder inside of which half folders had the new pink icon with thumbnails, and the remaining half didn't. What was weird was that if I opened one of those folders and did some change inside (rename, delete a picture) and went back, it would have reverted to the yellow default one.. :S

Tried re-rebuilding the cache etc but they didn't come back to pink :P

As a last resort I tried adding other keys into the Shell Icons registry folder, so I added 4, 5, 6 and 162 and added data pointing to the icons path.. Still nothing. Found a post from a guy who said he could make it work in Win 7 by adding extra registry values such as livefolder_back/front/data. Did that, to no end :S


At this point I have no idea what is wrong and I'm started to think it's not possible to do it yet in win 10? Or maybe I'm missing some other keys or values? Has anyone succeeded?

I have a software named Microangelo and with that one I can easily change one by one the default icons, which I have done for the main folders (document, pics, music, vids). But there is no option in there to change thumbnailed folders too, and even if there was they would have to be done one by one..

If anyone has any clue I'd be happy to hear!

Cheers!:)

almasy87 said:

I replaced 3, 4, 5 (back), 6 (front) and 162 (full).

Obviously I have rebuilt the icon cache and used cleanup to delete old thumbnails and restarted.. It worked but weirdly, for instance I had my "Pictures" folder inside of which half folders had the new pink icon with thumbnails, and the remaining half didn't. What was weird was that if I opened one of those folders and did some change inside (rename, delete a picture) and went back, it would have reverted to the yellow default one.. :S

Tried re-rebuilding the cache etc but they didn't come back to pink :P

As a last resort I tried adding other keys into the Shell Icons registry folder, so I added 4, 5, 6 and 162 and added data pointing to the icons path.. Still nothing. Found a post from a guy who said he could make it work in Win 7 by adding extra registry values such as livefolder_back/front/data. Did that, to no end :S


At this point I have no idea what is wrong and I'm started to think it's not possible to do it yet in win 10? Or maybe I'm missing some other keys or values? Has anyone succeeded?

I have a software named Microangelo and with that one I can easily change one by one the default icons, which I have done for the main folders (document, pics, music, vids). But there is no option in there to change thumbnailed folders too, and even if there was they would have to be done one by one..

If anyone has any clue I'd be happy to hear!

Cheers!:)

I believe if you have a 64 bit version of the OS you not only have to add new string values to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons but also to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons

If you do have 64-bit Win10 then give that a try and see if it works.

PirateAndy said:

I believe if you have a 64 bit version of the OS you not only have to add new string values to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons but also to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons

If you do have 64-bit Win10 then give that a try and see if it works.

And I've actually just tried it myself and it doesn't work unfortunately.

Anyone else know how to do this?

PirateAndy said:

And I've actually just tried it myself and it doesn't work unfortunately.

Anyone else know how to do this?

It's been a while since I asked this, but I'm just letting you know that not long after I made this post, like a couple of days, it started working on its own.
Sadly I do not know why - but I didn't do anything different, in fact I had pretty much given up on it...
Now it works fine :P

Maybe waiting for it to adjust by itself is the only solution? No idea...