Windows 10: Desktop icons misbehaving after Creators Update

Your situation is not unique and I have only 8 desktop icons. It's a hot mess. *Smile

 

Oh don't worry about it. Sometimes people at Microsoft get bored and decide on doing "Remixes" to Windows 10. Most of the time, the remixes are rather crappy. I'd suggest to ask them to get a new DJ.

 

I have found a better workaround for my Desktop Icon problem. I changed the IconVerticalSpacing registry setting to yield even smaller Icons. This created a little additional space between my 9th row of Small Icons and the Taskbar.

Now I have my Taskbar back and I can move my Icons at will without fear of the shuffling I had experienced on the Creators Update.

In the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

I changed IconVerticalSpacing from -1125 to -1100

Then rebooted and turned off "Auto-Hide Taskbar".
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Note - I had tried -1050 which worked but created a significant gap between the lower row of Small Icons and the Taskbar.

The tutorial "Change Desktop Icon Spacing in Windows 10" in this forum gives detailed instructions for making this type of change.

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Thanks for experimenting, I'll give it a try and turn 'align to grid' back on. The tutorial you mentioned is here:
Change Desktop Icon Spacing in Windows 10

BTW, a reboot is not necessary for it to take effect, you just need to restart explorer.exe
Restart explorer.exe Process in Windows 10

 

If you want, there's also an on-screen GUI version of this, for simplicity. Refer to post number #3 at this thread:
Desktop Icons Problems Solved - Windows 10 Forums

 

Sadly icon spacing isn't the issue I'm having or the issue the OP was about. They just need to get their act in gear and fix the wild movement of icons. I should be able to drag a stack of icons into an existing stack and just push the icons down like I've been able to do for almost two decades, not have to move them one by one otherwise they extend in a row across my desktop.

Also the 'randomly move every icon out of place so this new icon can go top left of the screen' is a pain in the butt.

If it weren't for the fact that I make use of other features from the Creators update then I would have just reverted to the previous version and disabled updates.

 

Don't know if this was mentioned yet or not, but change your Display Adapter screen resolution. Change up those values, keep the settings, and then change to another one, go through a bunch of them, then go back to your preferred resolution. Maybe this will fix some settings glitch in the Registry or something. Try it out.

 

The theory is that there is a bug introduced in Creators Update for handling the arrangement of icons on the desktop. It seems to be triggered (for me, at least) when trying to place an icon on the bottom row. Instead it gets placed at the top and all the other icons jump around to accommodate it. By making the vertical spacing fractionally smaller the bottom row is just a little higher up so there's a bit more free space below the bottom row. This seem to prevent the bug being triggered.

This theory is supported by Jim L's...

...which is another way of increasing the available space beneath the bottom row.

 

Though I've run with a hidden taskbar since Win 95 and I have the issue so shouldn't I have already avoided this?
I'll give icon spacing a go and report back.

EDIT: No change in behaviour.

 

Installed Fall Creators Update 16299.15. The problem was not fixed at all. Same exact weird behavior. Avoid this update!
Going back to Anniversary Update 14393.1770... *Rolleyes