How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10: Windows 10 is the latest offering by Microsoft and it comes with loaded features where you can customize your settings for better look and performance of your PC. But there is a certain limitation with what you can and cannot change regarding the look and the feel of the Windows, one such exception is the Windows drive icons. Windows 10 doesn’t provide an option to a drive’s icon but then again this limitation can be bypassed with a simple registry tweak.

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10

By default, Windows uses an icon for the drive based on what type of the drive it is such as network drive, USB drive etc but in this article, we are going to see how to change drive icon of a particular drive or set a new icon for all the disk drives. The only exception here is that if you turn on the BitLocker for the drive, then the BitLocker icon will always show for the drive no matter what. Anyway, without wasting any time let’s see How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10 with the help of the below-listed tutorial.

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10

Make sure to create a restore point just in case something goes wrong.

Method 1: How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10 Using autorun.inf File

Note: This method won’t work for a mapped network drive, but the other two methods will work. In case, you need to change the drive icon for C: drive (where the Windows is installed) then you need to be signed in as administrator. Also, for C: Drive you need to perform the below-listed steps on the desktop then move the autorun.inf file to the drive.

1.Press Windows Key + E to open File Explorer then from the left-hand window pane select This PC.

2.Double-click on the drive you want to change the icon for.

Change Drive Icon in Windows 10 Using autorun.inf File

3.Now right-click in an empty area inside the above drive and select New > Text Document.

Right-click in an empty area inside the above drive and select New then Text Document

Note: If you already have the autorun.inf file in the root directory then you can skip the step 3 & 4.

4.Name this text document as autorun.inf (.inf extension is very important).

Name the text document as autorun.inf & copy the .ico file to root of this drive

5.Copy the .ico file which you want to use as the icon for the particular drive and paste it inside the root of this drive.

6.Now double-click on the autorun.inf file and change the text to the following:

[autorun]
icon=”filename.ico”

Double-click on the autorun.inf file & enter the full path of your icon file

Note: Replace filename.ico to the actual name of the file such as disk.ico etc.

7.Once finished, press Ctrl + S to save the file or manually save it from Notepad menu by going to File > Save.

8.Reboot your PC to save changes and once the PC restart you will see that you have change the drive icon according to your preference.

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10

Method 2: How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10 for All Users in Registry Editor

1.Press Windows Key + R then type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor.

Run command regedit

2.Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons

Change Drive Icon for All Users in Registry Editor

Note: If you don’t have the DriveIcons key then right-click on Explorer then select New > Key and name this key as DriveIcons.

If you do not have 'Shell Icons' key then right-click on Explorer select New & then select Key

3.Right-click on the DriveIcons key then select New > Key and then type the capitalized drive letter (example – E) for the drive you want to change the drive icon for and hit Enter.

Right-click on the DriveIcons key then select New then Key

Note: If you already have the above subkey (example – E) then skip the step 3, instead go to step 4 directly.

4.Again right-click on above subkey (example – E) then click on New > Key and name this key as DefaultIcon then hit Enter.

Again right-click on the subkey you just created (example - E) then click on New then Key

5.Now make sure to select Defaulticon then in the right window pane double-click on the (Default) string.

Select Defaulticon then in the right window pane double-click on the (Default) string

6.Under the value data field type the full path of the icon file within the quotes and click OK.

Under the value data field type the full path of the icon file within the quotes and click OK

Note: Make sure the icon file is the following location: C:\Users\Public\Pictures
Now, for example, you have an icon file named drive.ico in the above location, so the value you are going to type would be:
C:\Users\Public\Pictures\drive.ico” and click OK.

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10

7.Once finished, close everything and reboot your PC.

This is How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10, but in future, if you need to undo the above changes then simply right-click on the subkey (example – E) which you created under the DriveIcons key then select Delete.

To Undo the Changes to Drive Icon simply right-click on the registry subkey and select Delete

Method 3: Change All the Drive Icons (Default drive icon) in Windows 10

1.Press Windows Key + R then type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor.

Run command regedit

2.Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons

Note: If you can’t file Shell Icons then right-click on Explorer then select New > Key then name this key as Shell Icons and hit Enter.

If you do not have 'Shell Icons' key then right-click on Explorer select New & then select Key

3.Right-click on the Shell Icons then select New > Expandable String value. Name this new string as 8 and hit Enter.

Right-click on the Shell Icons then select New then Expandable String value

Change All the Drive Icons (Default drive icon) in Windows 10

4.Double-click on the above string and change its value as follows:

D:\icons\Drive.ico

Note: Replace the above value with the actual location of your icon file.

Double-click on the string which you create (8) and change its value to icon location

5.Close Registry Editor and restart your PC to save changes.

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That’s it you have successfully learned How to Change Drive Icon in Windows 10 but if you still have any questions regarding this tutorial then feel free to ask them in the comment’s section.

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