Alternative Icons for Windows
Explanations and instructions

Bo Johansson 2004-04-24

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Before you can use my replacement icons, do like this:

  1. Download the zip file
  2. "Unzip" it to a new folder, for example C:\BJicons\
  3. Follow the instructions below

Drive Icons

W95drive W95flop W95cd-dr W95remov These are the standard Windows icons for hard disk, floppy, CD-ROM and removable drive.
BJdrive BJdrive.ico is the standard drive icon, modified to have two control lights.
BJtower BJtower.ico is a drive icon showing a tower model computer.
BJfloppy BJfloppy.ico is the standard floppy icon made slimmer, with a better looking floppy disk, with the control light at lower left, and with an eject button added at lower right.
BJcd-dr BJcd-dr.ico is the standard CD-ROM icon, with a CD tray instead of a slot, and with an eject button added at lower right.
BJzip_dr BJzip-dr.ico is my floppy icon, with the control light at lower right, and with a zip disk instead of a diskette.
BJzip-B BJzip-B.ico is my zip-drive icon, made even slimmer, and blue instead of grey.
BJmytwr BJmytwr.ico is an icon for a tower model "My Computer".

You can use programs like ActivIcons (freeware), More Properties 2.03 (freeware) or E-Icons (shareware) to change what icon Windows will use for each type of drive. In this case all drives of a certain type will have the same icon, so if you for example have more than one type of removable disk drive it is best to use a generic icon for them.
You can also change icon for "My Computer".

If you have Windows ME, Windows 98, or Windows 95 with MSIE 4 or better, you can use IconX (freeware), ActivIcons (freeware) or E-Icons (shareware) to assign a special icon to each individual drive on your computer. In this case different removable disk drives can have different icons.

"Lettered" Drive Icons

BJdriveC BJtowerC BJdriveC.ico and BJtowerC.ico are my drive icons with the letter C added.
BJdriveD BJtowerD BJdriveD.ico and BJtowerD.ico are my drive icons with the letter D added.
BJdriveE BJtowerE BJdriveE.ico and BJtowerE.ico are my drive icons with the letter E added.
BJdriveF BJtowerF BJdriveF.ico and BJtowerF.ico are my drive icons with the letter F added.

If you have Windows ME, Windows 98, or Windows 95 with MSIE 4 or better, you can use IconX (freeware), ActivIcons (freeware) or E-Icons (shareware) to assign a special icon to each individual drive on your computer. So each hard disk drive can have its own "lettered icon".

If you don't have Windows ME, Windows 98, or Windows 95 with MSIE 4 or better, or don't want to use IconX (freeware), ActivIcons (freeware) or E-Icons (shareware), you can use the same trick as used for AutoPlay CD-ROMS, the AutoRun information file, to have Windows display these drive icons with letters for your hard disk drives.

The AutoRun trick also works in Windows XP.

If you want to have your own icon for each drive, just put a text file named AUTORUN.INF in the root of the drive (for example "C:\Autorun.inf"), with these two lines in it: 

 [autorun]
 icon = C:\BJicons\BJdriveC.ico,0
The line "icon =" contains 2 parameters.
The first one is the path to the icon file (here assumed to be in the folder C:\BJicons\).
The second one is the number of the icon in the file.
For an ICO file, it's always 0.
But you could also have icons located in a DLL file, and the second parameter is then the index of the icon starting from 0.

A sample AUTORUN.INF file is provided in the zip file.

The idea to have drive icons with letters I have shamelessly stolen from: 

     ____              __
    / __/__  ___ _____/ /__  Reichert Gilles aka Snark
   _\ \/ _ \/ _ `/ __/  '_/  Mail: <ping4487@ping.be>
  /___/_//_/\_,_/_/ /_/\_\   URL : <http://www.reichertonline.com/>
On his website you can find more information and his version of drive icons with letters A-Z.

Other Icons

BJwzip BJxzip BJyzip BJwzip.ico, BJxzip.ico, BJyzip.ico, BJzzip1.ico, BJzzip2.ico and BJzzip3.ico are six sex alternative zip icons.
BJzzip1 BJzzip2 BJzzip3
BJqzip BJqzip.ico is an icon for QuickZip.
BJuzip BJuzip.ico is an icon for UltimateZip.
BJbzip2 BJbzip2.ico is an icon for files compressed with bzip2.
BJhtml BJhtml2 BJhtml3 BJhtml.ico, BJhtml2.ico and BJhtml3.ico are icons for HTML files.
BJcss BJcss2 BJcss.ico and BJcss2.ico are icons for CSS files.
BJjs BJjs2 BJjs.ico and BJjs2.ico are icons for JavaScript files.
BJphp BJphp2 BJphp3 BJphp.ico, BJphp2.ico and BJphp3.ico are icons for php files.
BJphpinc BJphpinc2 BJphpinc.ico and BJphpinc2.ico are icons for php include files.
BJshort I have made two alternatives to the arrow that is overlaid the icon of a shortcut.
BJshort.ico is a black arrow, more discreet than Windows' standard arrow, and BJshort2.ico is a similar red arrow.
BJshort2
BJc BJc2 BJc.ico and BJc2.ico are icons for C program files.
BJcpp BJcpp2 BJcpp.ico and BJcpp2.ico are icons for C++ program files.
BJh BJh2 BJh.ico and BJh2.ico are icons for C and C++ header files.

To use these alternative filetype icons, open Explorer and choose the View - Folder Alternatives... - File Types dialog, find the right file types (in this case for example "winzip files", "bzip2 files" or "html files"), click on Edit... and then Change Icon..., and the dialog for changing the icon will appear.

(I think this is what English language Windows call those menu choices and dialogs, or it will be something similar.)

Or if you want an easier way to do it, use ActivIcons (freeware) and change "Default System Icons", or E-Icons (shareware) to change icons for any file type.

To use an alternative shortcut overlay icon, use ActivIcons (freeware) and go to "Miscellaneous" and change "Shortcut", or E-Icons (shareware) and click on "Change Icons", "Others", "Shortcut Overlay", and find the icon you want to use with "Browse".
(Or use TweakUI or some similar program)

Notice that all my icons come in size 48x48, 32x32 and 16x16 pixels, and with 256 and 16 colors. BJzip-B_48x2 BJzip-B BJzip-B_32-16
BJzip-B_16-256 BJzip-B_16-16

You can also read these explanations and instructions in text form, exactly as provided in the zip file.

Windows icons Go back to the Windows Icons page.