Windows 10: Changing icons of default live folders with thumbnail

Hello everyone *Smile

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

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!*Smile

:)

 

Windows 10 .PDF and Image Icons

The default icon for windows 10 files is determined by the default application used to open it. Install adope reader and set as the default application for your .PDFs and the icon will change to the Adobe icon for .PDFs. You can change your default applications
in the Windows 10 settings. You can also set the view to thumbnail for your folders which will show a preview of the file instead of the icon.

 

Customised folder pics reverting back to default?

This could be many reasons.

If you are just putting files into a folder and the folder shows thumbnail preview and then later is show default folder image

then it is probably because Windows 10 deletes your thumbnail cache when it reaches about 500MB.

You can in the properties>Customize

use a photo (jpg etc) to display that folder view

you can select an icon and use that for folder display

Note Icons and thumbnails are different and have separate caches to store them.

But you say it shows a thumbnail view and when putting in new item into that folder, the folder view goes back to default view.

That is a bit odd if the case

Maybe rebuild your thumb nail and icon caches

download and run tool, it works good

Thumbnail and Icon Cache Rebuilder for Windows 10

and disable auto deleting of your thumbnail cache. and increase icon cache

Stop Windows 10 Auto Deleting Thumbnail Cache "Updated"

Usually your folder will show 2 items on the thumbnail and usually after adding more items into that folder, the view will not change

go into folder options>view tab and make sure the first box is unchecked. Apply - Apply to folders - OK

 

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?

 

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

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