If you don’t like the default size of the icons on your Windows Vista desktop then here are some tricks that you can try to get the desired size for those icons.

There are 4 ways you can resize those desktop icons in Windows Vista (in the order of simple to advanced),

1. Desktop >> View Menu
2. Mouse Wheel
3. Windows Color and Appearance Dialog
4. Registry Editor

Here is how,

Desktop >> View Menu

Step-1:

Right click on your desktop somewhere and click on the “View” menu option. As you can see below, there are 3 fixed sizes that you can choose, Large Icons, Medium Icons and Classic Icons.

Step-2:

Choose the desired icon size and Vista will redraw those icons on the corresponding size.

Mouse Wheel

If you don’t want to constraint yourself with those predefined sizes then you can use your mouse to resize it to your desire.

Step-1:

Click anywhere on your desktop to make sure that the focus is on desktop.

Step-2:

Press and hold the “Control” key on your keyboard and scroll your mouse wheel (the one in the middle of the mouse). The icons will resize in small increments and when you reach the desired size just release the “Control” key and you should see icons on your desktop of your desired size.

Windows Color and Appearance Dialog

If you would prefer to play with the numbers then this would be the preferred method for you,

Step-1:

Right click anywhere on your Desktop and click on the “Personalize” menu option.

Step-2:

On the “Personalization” dialog click on the “Windows Color and Appearance” option.

Step-3:

Windows will popup a typical Windows XP type dialog “Appearance Settings”. Click on the “Advanced” button at the bottom of the dialog. If you use the Vista’s Aero color scheme then you might want to click thru one more dialog where you click on the “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.

Step-4:

On the “Advanced Appearance” dialog choose “Icon” as the “Item” and then increase the size to your preferred number.

Step-5:

Click the “OK” buttons to dismiss all dialogs. Windows Vista will now redraw the desktop icons on the size that you’ve specified.

Registry Editor

If you are the kind of person to play with the Windows Registry (warning: don’t just play with the Windows Registry, it is not a toy to play with, I’m telling ya) then this would be the tip that you’d want to follow.

Step-1:

Open up the Registry Editor with the “regedit” command.

Step-2:

Locate the key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics” and change the value as you desire.

If you make changes to the registry, in most cases, you might want to restart the computer to get the changes into effect.

I hope now you are happy with the size of those icons on your desktop.