My desktop icons are disordered

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Erick

My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Erick » 20.02.2013 16:47:20

Every time I restart Dexpot, desktop icons are disordered and not retain the position assigned to them.
I have Dexpot 1.6.6, Build 2227 running on win 7 ultimate.
How do I fix?
TIA,
Erick.

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Patrick
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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Patrick » 25.02.2013 14:38:08

:dex:

Does this really happen every time you start Dexpot or just when it's run automatically at boot time?

Superted

Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Superted » 27.02.2013 11:54:45

Try this application I use, http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/. There isn't support for individual configs on each desktop but it's pretty customizable and you can hide all your icons with a double click. If you pay for it you can automatically sort file types to different "fences" of your choosing. As soon as it starts up it sorts your desktop out, really nice.

Erick

Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Erick » 11.03.2013 20:50:37

Patrick:
This really happen every time I start Dexpot:
I distribute the icons, for example, at nine positions on the desktop. While not turn off my computer, so good. When I turn off the computer and turn on again, the icons, all are loaded to the left of the desktop, disordered and some of them uppermost,

Thank you for your support.

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Patrick
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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Patrick » 12.03.2013 22:27:10

Disable Dexpot's "Start with Windows" option (or remove it from the Startup folder, if that's the way you start it) and then launch Dexpot manually after you restart the computer. Do the icons still get disordered?

Erick

Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Erick » 22.03.2013 16:51:19

Patrick.

Yes, the icons still get disordered.

I try this.

I move diferente kind of icons, from letf to rigth side on desktop:
shorcut to folders.
image.jpg
file.xlsx
file.pdf
program.exe
shortcut to someprogram

I restarted my machine, everything is ok.
I started desxpot manually, then. the icons moved to left.

If you want I can send you a video.

Thanks.

Erick

Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Erick » 17.04.2013 16:25:50

Hi everybody!!

At least, I found a solution: After the icons are moved, open the Dexpot´s window settings, in the General tab, on Profiles, clic on Save button.

If an icon is moved again, repeat the operation again.... and again...

I wonder: What does the option "Save profile on exit" ?

See you!!!

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 02.07.2016 18:01:10

I use Dexpot since the beginning of WinXP, where it always worked well.
But since I changed to Win7 (Ultimate) it has become a PiA...
Almost every time I start Windows, the icons are almost OK in Window 1 and also in Window 2 (where I have only few icons), but in Window 3 and 4 they are messed up.
Since I quite rarely use Windows 3 and 4, I can live with loading a backup WHEN I AM IN THAT WINDOW (not when I am in Window 1).
Then it is quite OK.
I tried delayed autostart, but it did not really helped.

Now I discovered something:
If I kill Dexpot in the Task Manager and then restart it, the icons are fine.
So I want a .bat file that does that for me, that I can autostart with a little delay.
Who can give me one?

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 03.07.2016 15:52:57

I made a simple batch file RestartDexpot.bat:
@echo off
taskkill /f /IM dexpot.exe
start "" "C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot\dexpot.exe"

Now I have Dexpot in Autostart without delay and Startup Delayer then starts the batch file after 15 sekonds (plus startup time for the Delayer).
It so far works.

But only delayed start of Dexpot does not work. It has to be running, then killed and restarted.

An observation: When the icons become disordered, some of them often jump up and down a bit until they settle, usually in an incorrect order.
Then the displaced ones seem to usually be displaced vertically.

Maybe someone has som better solution or an improvem,ent to the batch file.

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 04.07.2016 10:47:56

It seems a bit better to have a small delay between killiing and starting. Here 4 seconds:
@echo off
taskkill /f /IM dexpot.exe
TIMEOUT /T 4
start "" "C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot\dexpot.exe"
CLS

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 04.07.2016 13:41:07

Strangely enough the autostart with a delay of 20 seconds works quite well in my laptop, but no reasonable delay works well in my desktop.

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Multi » 11.07.2016 20:04:32

I have had this issue for a very long time and have sort of lived with it up to now.
Today I started to look into it again. At this time I have also found that reloading the icons from the profile using the desktop manager's right-click menu work, though it has to be done on each screen where one want the icons refreshed and each refresh takes about 12 - 15 seconds to run - way too long :-( but if that is the only alternative.....
I have setup a desktop shortcut for the batch file given, but it does not seem to work for me. It does not seem to kill the task at all, as far as I can see.

In the process though I have noticed that copying shortcuts from screen to screen might be a part of the cause.
After I found the batch file comment in this thread, I went to my first screen, made up the batch file and created a link for it on the first desktop.
Then, because I expected to need the shortcut on all screens, I copied the shortcut using the Dexpot 'Desktop Windows' dialog in the 'icons' tab of that dialog on my first screen to the rest of my screens. When I went to one of the later screens, the just created icon showed up on the other screens in the same relative location it was on the first screen and thus it had shoved all other icons 'down' by one on each screen.

This behavior then explains some of my problems, but not all.
As I have two monitors, (same resolution for both 1920x1080), icons from either monitor get moved on startup, without my inserting or moving any icons from screen to screen.
Icons which are well off by themselves on the right hand of either monitor are moved to the left to the first monitor screen, where they rearrange and scramble the icons I had positioned there before the boot up - but not all are moved. Some icons stay over several boots, while a number - and almost always the same ones - are moved consistently to the left. The pattern does not seem to be random, but I have not found any 'rule' as yet.

At one time, I had a shell installed to make the main menu look more like the earlier version, but as a test I have had that shell removed for several weeks now and the problem persisted all along. Thus it was not the shell, but either Win 10 or Dexpot.or ????

Also, in all these test, and as a general rule, I exit Dexpot before shutting down, to make sure it will have the time to save its state completely and I delay the startup for about 45 seconds to give the machine a chance to 'wake up' - again as a precaution, but it does not seem to help.

Any thoughts on resolving this very frustrating problem will be greatly appreciated.
TIA

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Multi » 11.07.2016 20:50:26

Just now, I exited Dexpot, after setting all my icons as I wanted them, saving the configuration to a separate dxp file.
After the exit, I saved the user.dxi file to a backup copy. Then I rebooted the machine, prevented Dexpot from starting on its own.
After the reboot, I compared the save .dxi file with profile.dxi and they were identical.
As soon as I started Dexpot, , the profile,dxi file was modified with IconZahl0 going from 114 to 0 and the whole group [Icons0] disappearing.
Checking the icon positions on screen 2 - 6, the usual scramble had taken place again :evil:

Again, I had to restore the icons from the profile for each screen from #3 to the last one

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Ion-C » 22.07.2016 01:57:39

When you want an icon to appear on all desktops manually move it to the PUBLIC desktop (I'm using Vista - yours may be called something else.)

If you do copy icons TO MORE THAN ONE DESKTOP each icon will have a different position for each desktop. By distributing via PUBLIC, all desktops will try to follow your first move in DT1 - and then remember if you move it elsewhere in other desktops. This seems to be a little bit flaky. Best advice here is to put it in one spot and leave it there.

Windows file system will sometimes screw up and create a phantom copy that you can't get rid of within Dexpot. To get rid of it you have to physically move the real icon (wherever that is) by opening its desktop manually in a file browser. Windows file system will update itself and disappear the phantom as well (garbage collection.)

Get the basic concept down and be able to open each desktop manually USING A FILE BROWSER to look and see what is in there.
THEY ARE:
(USER=PUBLIC / DESKTOP) (USER=YOU / DESKTOP 1 ... 20)

TIPS:
You can group icons and files in a container folder on Desktop 1 and then access them using a shortcut of that folder on any other Desktop - try this with KO APPROACH which will show you the contents of even a shortcut on hover.
You can save and restore individual desktops by force using RELCON. But you shouldn't have to.
Remember to create a profile backup besides the one that is "automatically saved."
You can preclude any confusion by appending -DT1 etc to an icon. I even PREFIX mine to match them to a wallpaper grid because
When you change resolutions, color depth, etc. BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN. That's when you find out that in spite of it it all, some things work - and some don't.

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Multi » 22.07.2016 16:43:25

Ion-C wrote:When you want an icon to appear on all desktops manually move it to the PUBLIC desktop (I'm using Vista - yours may be called something else.)


Thank you very much for your comments.
I am running under Win 10 & I do have a 'Public' desktop, but I have no idea what it does or how I would view it - can you please explain a bit more?
I can see the desktop icons in the file browser, but how would I know what position they occupy?

I usually try to have all icons for the same app in the same spot on all desktop, or at least as close as I can manage. What is so frustrating is when they move around to unexpected locations.

Curiously, several icons NEVER move, while others move almost every time, but not to the same places, no matter how many times I re-position them.
What really bothers me is that Dexpot provides the means to save their position - at least that is what I take saving the 'profile' to be intended for - but somehow it is not able to 'enforce' the icon's positions when I reload the same profile.
Somehow, Win 10 seems to override all of Dexpot's work - though it is hard to say whether Dexpot even gets a chance at positioning the icons at all

Ion-C wrote:If you do copy icons TO MORE THAN ONE DESKTOP each icon will have a different position for each desktop. By distributing via PUBLIC, all desktops will try to follow your first move in DT1 - and then remember if you move it elsewhere in other desktops. This seems to be a little bit flaky. Best advice here is to put it in one spot and leave it there.

Windows file system will sometimes screw up and create a phantom copy that you can't get rid of within Dexpot. To get rid of it you have to physically move the real icon (wherever that is) by opening its desktop manually in a file browser. Windows file system will update itself and disappear the phantom as well (garbage collection.)

I have had some limited success in clearing out the Windows icon cache, but, as I said, very limited and since it is very tedious, I have not done a lot of testing
A quick check does not show any equivalent location for the 'public' user and I would have been surprised it found an icon cache for 'Public' :-)
Ion-C wrote:Get the basic concept down and be able to open each desktop manually USING A FILE BROWSER to look and see what is in there.
THEY ARE:
(USER=PUBLIC / DESKTOP) (USER=YOU / DESKTOP 1 ... 20)

I'll have to try some of this and see how I make out.
Ion-C wrote:TIPS:
You can group icons and files in a container folder on Desktop 1 and then access them using a shortcut of that folder on any other Desktop - try this with KO APPROACH which will show you the contents of even a shortcut on hover.
You can save and restore individual desktops by force using RELCON. But you shouldn't have to.
Remember to create a profile backup besides the one that is "automatically saved."

I will try these utilities and see how they work and what difference they make.
I had installed a shell to make Win 10 look more like the older OS versions, but since I was unsure if that might be part of the problem I removed it and I am still unsure whether it made any substantial difference.
Ion-C wrote:You can preclude any confusion by appending -DT1 etc to an icon. I even PREFIX mine to match them to a wallpaper grid because
When you change resolutions, color depth, etc. BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN. That's when you find out that in spite of it it all, some things work - and some don't.

I never change those, at least not intentionally :-)

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 01.08.2016 12:09:59

The batch file I wrote about above usually works for me, but not always.
I have now changed it to

@echo off
taskkill /f /IM DexControl.exe
taskkill /f /IM dexpot.exe
TIMEOUT /T 6
"C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot\dexpot.exe"

TIMEOUT /T 6
taskkill /f /IM DexControl.exe
taskkill /f /IM dexpot.exe
TIMEOUT /T 6
"C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot\dexpot.exe"
CLS

Of course, "_UTILITIES\Dexpot" is where I have installed the program and needs to be changed accordingly for you case: C:\[folder]\[subfolder]\dexpot.exe. If it did not work for you, that will be why...

I let it start delayed by 50s but have turned off the direct start (delayed or not) of dexpot.exe itself.
This works much better. The two taskkills in the beginning do not matter if Dexpot is not already running, but makes it possible to run the batch file again in now rare cases that icons are still messed up.

The delay and timeout times are long and I am experimenting with reducing them.

It is a great pity that this very good program is still suffering from icon disorders and it is certainly worth being remedied!
It obviously has to do with some conflict or interference with other autostarting programs.

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Multi » 01.08.2016 17:38:51

VirtuaMan wrote:Of course, "_UTILITIES\Dexpot" is where I have installed the program and needs to be changed accordingly for you case: C:\[folder]\[subfolder]\dexpot.exe. If it did not work for you, that will be why...

Thank you very much for your comments, :-)
My delay is about the same as yours and sometimes Dexpot is waiting for me to confirm whether it should load the last configuration or the profile, so the time before it starts is even longer and all of the rest of the startup is well finished.

The batch file works alright, but the icon positions get scrambled during use of the multiple desktops.

Just switching desktops seems to be enough to get them scrambled. In fact just now as I moved to another desktop and back to this one, the icons, mainly towards the left side of my screens, change their position several times until they finally settle down to a temporarily stable position

VirtuaMan wrote:It is a great pity that this very good program is still suffering from icon disorders and it is certainly worth being remedied!
It obviously has to do with some conflict or interference with other autostarting programs.

It is very much a pity, but the multiple desktops operation of Dexpot is way better than anything else I have tried.
But, I don't see it as just a startup problem. IMO, it is either some attempt/interference by Win 10 itself or possibly some video driver or perhaps it is related to the number of screens, icons, screen resolution ....

Using the utility ReIcon recommended by the last responder - I can't see his handle right now, - does help a lot and it is a lot faster in restoring than Dexpot.
Installing new apps or moving icons from one desktop to another usually causes trouble, possibly because the positions interfere, though I have not taken the time to get more specific details on this part of the problem.

The most puzzling aspect is that not all icons get scrambled; some are rooted to their spot while others are moved consistently, though not always to the same alternate spot.
(BTW, & FWIW, I am using two screens, side by side on the machine I am having most of the problems. On a couple of other machines, I do not seem to have quite as much trouble, but then, I don't use them all that much either.)

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 10.08.2016 10:03:12

Now I have come a little bit further....
I unmarked "Start with Windows" in the Dexpot settings and instead let Dexpot autostart immediately with Startup Delayer running Dexpot.exe.
Then Startup Delayer after 50 seconds also starts RestartDesktop.bat, which is as follows:

@echo off
taskkill /f /IM DexControl.exe
taskkill /f /IM dexpot.exe
TIMEOUT /T 6
"C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot\dexpot.exe"
CLS
:eof

I have installed my Dexpot in C:\_UTILITIES\Dexpot and you will have to readjust for where you have it installed.
Actually, the icons now are often - but not always - (quite) OK already after the autostart of Dexpot.exe.
And if not, they will be after running RestartDeskpot.bat.
As a third option, I can also run RestartDeskpot.bat from an icon on my desktop. If needed...

It appears that it makes some difference if I mark "Start with Windows" instead of autostarting with Startup Delayer.
Regrettably, this is merely a workaround and not the real solution that I do hope will be found one day...

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby Multi » 10.08.2016 18:20:23

I have had mine on delayed start for quite some time, but it makes no difference.

As far as I can tell, the problem occurs almost at every screen switch and definitely when adding or moving icons from one screen to another.
The problem when moving, or copying, an icon from one screen to another is not really surprising in some way since it seems Dexpot does not look for an unoccupied location for the copied icon, but tries to keep the location the same. This often enough displaces an existing icon and shifts the rest by one.

So far the best solution I have found is ReIcon. Not only is it much simpler to use, but also much, much faster.

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Re: My desktop icons are disordered

Postby VirtuaMan » 10.08.2016 19:03:49

So far, what I described in my last post works fine for me.
Working around ...
But how do you use ReIcon? In autostart or running it manually?

As concerns moving icons between desks I have no problem.
Only, if I install a new application in the first window, its icon will appear in all windows.
If I want it in the second or another window, I install it there and then there is no problem.
If I want it in the first window, I can install it in another window and then move it to the first window.
But if I install it in the first window without thinking about it, I can right-click the icon there and copy the path from "Properties".
Then I can delete that icon in the first window and it disappears from all.
And I can install the icon in another window simply using the copied path.
There is another tedious way described by Dexpot, which I find more complicated ...


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