Reduce size of desktop icons in Windows Vista

To reduce the size of the desktop icons in Windows Vista, right click and choose “View” > “Classic Icons”
I could not figure this out myself and so I thought this information might be useful for someone. The default Windows Vista icons are too big for me.

22 thoughts on “Reduce size of desktop icons in Windows Vista”

  1. Also another way to change the desktop icon size in Vista is to place the mouse pointer over a icon, hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse scroll wheel to make them bigger or smaller. This will produce smaller changes (bigger/smaller) with each click of the scroll wheel.

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  2. I am so glad I ran across this solution. It has been driving me crazy. Now if you could tell me how to solve another problem, I would be most grateful.
    On yahoo games using Vista, the text is so small. I changed resoultion and made it better but that messes up the other pages. Is there a way to change the text to larger. I have ran into lots who have this problem. Thank you so much for your help.

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  3. I have been trying to reduce size of desktop icons for last two days, until I found your site and your help was great. Thank you

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  4. THANK YOU.
    It’s been driving me crazy, the default icon size in VISTA takes up to much desktop real estate. Thank you for the solution.

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  5. As per the comments above I\’d tried and failed many times to reduce the icon sizes and accepted that it was an unchangeable constant not unlike the new Office Ribbon feature which is classed as an \’improvement\’.
    Thanks for the advice on icon sizing. If you figure out a crafty way of replacing the ribbon with a classic mode I\’d be grateful…and so would the rest of my office!!
    Dan

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  6. THAT was so easy..Thnk you…….BUT !!! I have other problems now…..I downloaded the updates for Vista as per Microsoft…and WOW everything grew so big…….I run Vista the first edition and was never told it was the BETA version !! what a mess I paid $3,600 for a heap of garbage…..HP Pavillion 7000..it crashed the second day………and has been a problem ever since from hinge breaking to corner of the facia snapping off……and continual crashing…..HP said nothing they can do its the Beta version…???now this……..if it crashes we are supposed to go into the start menu and hit RECOVERY…Ha !!!! thats ok if you can get into the start menu…….ohh well
    I would so appreciate it if you could help me get everything else back to normal size…….with your wonderful help I have reduced the size of the icons ….but task bar and everything else is extra large……..have tried every means know so far to reduce things down……..nothing works….
    PLEASE HELP ME…..and you\’ll have a friend for life….

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  7. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Have been looking for a solution to very large icons on the desktop and then, disappearing icons on the desktop for ove two months…

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  8. thank you so much for sharing this very helpful info. it really helped me since i just had a reboot on my laptop and icons returned big over my desktop. thank you again for the wonderful tips.

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