My desktop icons are super-sized

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I was looking at the latest AskWoody PLUS Newsletter and read the article about running perfmon /report. After running that, my desktop icons are super-sized now.

They were originally set at 125%. (Right-click on Desktop, select Display Settings, under Scale and Layout it was set to 125%). I tried setting it to 100% but the size does not improve much. How do I get the back to the size they were.

Here is how they were before the problem. This is a snapshot that I took about a month ago.

This is how big they are now.

I tried shutting down and powering up again to see if that would fix the problem, but they are still super-sized.

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To add a few more details:
1. The icons were originally auto-arranged and they still are auto-arranged on the super-sized icon display.
1. The first image with the super-sized icons has the display set at 100%. Icons are overlapping icons.
2. This is how the super-icon display looks when it has its original setting of 125%. You can see that some of the icons are dropping off the bottom of the display, in addition to icon overlapping icon. I think that there are as many as three icons in an overlapping spot in some cases.

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https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/change-icon-size-windows-10

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Whew!! That was simple. I had been thinking that the Scale and Layout options affect the size of the icons rather than the size of text on the display, and I didn’t think to look at View (which changes the size of icons, rather than the text).

That’s a relief! I had just installed the October patch Tuesday patches and I thought it was “the temporary profile bug”.

I had had the “view” size of the icons set to medium. I myself did not change the “View” size to large, but that was what the problem was. It seemed to have changed on its own.

Do you have any idea as to why that happened? Recently, I have had something voluntarily open (such as an URL from my desktop screen or an icon from the taskbar). I keep Defender and my anti-virus software up-do-date, do full scans weekly and quick scans twice a week. I’ve had no bad reports from there, so I don’t think it’s malware at work.

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Do you have any idea as to why that happened?

How can it possibly happen by accident? One way (maybe the only way) is unknowingly holding down the Control key while bumping the scroll wheel of a mouse or initiating the scrolling gesture with a touch-pad when viewing the desktop.

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wavy

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Yes, I experimented with your possibilities. Holding down the CTRL key while scrolling with the mouse wheel is exactly how it happened!!

I must have thought my pointer was on a document when in fact it was on the desktop.

Thanks.

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That is an awful lot of icons! How do you ever find the one you want?

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The Surfing Pensioner wrote:

That is an awful lot of icons! How do you ever find the one you want?

I like to have everything in front of me that I might need at the touch of an icon. They are organized by location. Don’t worry–I can handle it; it’s been long-standing on all three of my devices; I know it by heart. Besides that, it has the advantage of confusing anyone else who looks at it!! 🙂

When I move to 2004, I might sort them out by category and create new, named desktops, one for each category.

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Good for you! I just took one look at the screenshot and imagined how all those icons would dance in front of my tired old eyes late at night……………………………………!

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WCHS wrote:

Do you have any idea as to why that happened?

Can’t say. No change in icons sizes on my 1909 Pro with Oct. updates and none on Windows 10 2004 Pro with Oct. updates.

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The detailed settings in the (Win 7) Registry are at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Before experimenting with fine adjustments one probably should do an Export back up, ‘just in case’.

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i ?….somehow reversed the close all tabs popup caution recently. nature of the beast?

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