Where is the RegKey for Show/Hide Desktop Icons on Win XP

Question

On WinXP if you right click the desktop, and select View, and select 'Show Desktop Icons', the icons are hidden.

Do you know the reg key that stores this value?

And maybe more important, how did you know that or find the value?

Answer 1

The key is at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\HideIcons

Set it to 1 to hide the icons, 0 to display them. You will have to log off and back on to see the changes.

I looked in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive because hiding desktop icons is a per-user setting (as opposed to a per-machine setting, which I would have looked in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for).

If you're targeting a setting for a specific program, look in the Software key, then search by company and product. In this case, it was Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Since we're messing with the desktop, which is part of Explorer, I started looking in the Explorer key. From there is was just a quick search.

Answer 2

Process Monitor from Windows Sysinternals is a great tool for answering questions like this. You can even Run Process Monitor from live.sysinternals.com.

Set it up to monitor Operation is RegSetValue, then make the change through the UI and watch what Registry keys get updated.

If you are getting too much noise from your filter selections, you can add additional filters for Process Name is (in this case) explorer.exe and/or a Path contains (in this case) hide.

Process Monitor may seem like an IT-only tool, but it is also a developers' tool. It is an excellent way to ensure Registry keys are being updated, DLLs are being loaded, configuration files are being read and/or processes are being spawned.