August 2003
Beginner
416 pages
12h 47m
English
Content preview from Windows XP HacksBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Remove “Unremovable” Desktop Icons
To create your own customized XP interface, you need to be able to remove certain desktop icons. A Registry hack lets you remove any you want, including those apparently protected by XP.
Creating the perfect, customized XP interface doesn’t only mean changing icons; it also means removing them. For example, many power users look down their nose at America Online, and yet, on many systems, that icon can’t be removed easily.
America Online isn’t the only icon protected this way; many others are as well. Which desktop icons are protected on your system will depend on your exact version of XP (for example, SP-1) and the manufacturer of your PC. The Recycle Bin is protected on all versions, but the America Online icon is protected on some systems, and not on others.
To customize XP to your liking, you’ll want to be
able to delete these protected icons. To do so,
you’ll need a Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor
[Hack #68] and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace.
Here’s where you’ll find various
special desktop icons. They’re not listed by name,
but instead by CLSID—for example,
{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} for the
Recycle Bin. Table 2-3 in [Hack #12] lists
CLSIDs of common desktop objects, so use
it to find the CLSID of the icon you want to delete.
To remove an icon from the desktop, simply delete the key of the
icon—for example,
{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} for the Recycle ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.