Icons move when undocking laptop windows 7

Icons return to the their locations and the external is once again his main. When he docks the unit and boots, the external screen comes on as the secondary extended.

Oooh, I misread that. I thought you said that there were 60 of them on the desktop. That's not normal. I have found that using the manufacturer graphics driver to set these things up works better than letting Windows handle it. Sound familiar? If you've noticed that the icons change their positions after you run a particular program, this might be the case. What is the solution?

Not to run that program :- or look through its settings, maybe there is an option to adjust the screen resolution it uses. Contact the company that makes the offending program, and they might be able to help. If only some icons are moving after you save changes to the documents they represent, it could be because the program that saves the changes actually recreates a new document from scratch, and it makes Windows to find a new position for the icon rather than reuse the old one.

As suggested in the comments below, a solution to such a problem is not to save documents themselves on the desktop. Instead, save them to some other folder, such as Documents, and create shortcuts to the documents on the Desktop.

This way, when you save the document, the shortcut will not be changed, and it should keep its position on the desktop. If Windows keeps rearranging the icons even after you've tried the previous suggestions, another possibility is that you have a faulty video card or an outdated driver for the video card.

You see, if the video card or its driver do not behave well, they may change the resolution spontaneously, and when the resolution changes, it causes Windows to rearrange the icons on the desktop, too. If this is the case, first of all check for updates to your video card driver, and install a new version, if available. Keep in mind that you may need to search the web site of the company that manufactured your video card for the latest driver for your specific model.

If updating the driver does not solve the problem, try tweaking the video card settings, such as changing its resolution or the display mode. Good luck! Finally, if Windows keeps rearranging the desktop icons no matter what you try, you may want to install our software Icon Shepherd. It memorizes the positions of the desktop icons and keeps track of them when you move the icons around, creating snapshots of the icons after each change.

When Windows messes up your icons, you can use the Icon Shepherd icon next to the system clock to restore a previously saved layout of the icons, and return them to their proper places. After that click and empty space on your desktop, right click and refresh 3 x. To test this solution, I opened a image bank website and tried to save any image. Save as… in my desktop just to test and ok! None of the icons changed their place, like before. Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

In reply to Syed N's post on July 26, Robert Mattes. Dave I have the same issue with several notebooks on network. All Dell and Dell Docking stations. All Service Pack 3. It used to work and the icons stayed tha same docked and undocked and redocked. However they don't the icons move around and don't come back to place when redocked.

Dena B. In reply to Robert Mattes's post on February 21, In reply to kcvogt's post on April 6, Mine changes resolution as well, but when I change the resolution on my external monitor it doesn't stay. The resolution continues to change everytime I undock and re-dock I have to go in and reset the resolution.

My icons do not move back to their original places, and most times I loose them all together and end up with 2 out of 10 remaining on the screen.

I think I found how to fix it. Hi - thanks for that suggestion but the lock items was already checked. I did, however, while working with your suggestion uncover the following that might be the key.

If I undock with the computer open, still running, etc, my icons are fine. If, I close it so it goes into standby mode, when I undock and bring it back out of standby is when my icons are messed up.

A quick note for you - the "lock items" shows up in the drop down menu when you right click on desktop and choose "Arrange icons". Thanks for your help. Since I have an external monitor, I've got my laptop power management set to "Do Nothing" when I close the lid.