[Registry Method] How to Prevent Themes to Change Desktop Icons & Mouse Pointers in Windows 7?



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/Windows%207/Windows7logo.png

Windows 7 comes with lots of bundled themes which can be applied using Desktop Personalization window. You can also download many free Windows 7 themes using Microsoft official Windows 7 theme gallery.

But almost all these themes come with their own pre-defined mouse cursors and Desktop icons and when you apply a theme, it changes the Desktop icons and cursors automatically without even asking you. It becomes annoying when you have manually changed them in past.

You can prevent themes to change icons and cursors by changing a few options in Mouse and Desktop Icons settings. You can read following tutorial which shows how to do the task:

How to Prevent Themes to Change Desktop Icons & Mouse Pointers in Windows 7?

You can also use Registry Editor to do the same task and today in this tutorial, we are going to share the registry method.

Follow these simple steps to prevent themes to automatically change Desktop icons and mouse cursors in Windows 7 using registry:

1. Type regedit in RUN or Startmenu Searchbox and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes

3. In right-side pane, create or modify following 2 DWORD values:

ThemeChangesDesktopIcons
ThemeChangesMousePointers

And set their values to 0

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v374/vishaal_here/ThemeChangesDesktopIcons_MousePoint.png

4. That's it. Now themes will not change Desktop icons and mouse cursors automatically.

PS: If you want to don't want to manually change registry, download following registry scripts to do the task automatically. After downloading, extract ZIP file and run the desired registry script:

Download Registry Script

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This article was posted in Troubleshooting, Windows 7.


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2 Comments

  • ian

    I rarely visit your website now..

    you should know why :p

  • Richard

    Being able to prevent themes from changing the mouse pointers, and desktop icons
    is very helpful.

    My problem is with Themes changing the Windows Sounds. I have them set to " No Sounds "
    which most themes change. How about a fix for that.

    Adding "ThemeChangesWindowsSounds" did not work.

    Thanks
    Richard

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