How to organize desktop program foldersicons - Windows 2000

[edong]

When I click "Start >Programs", my desktop is more than full that I could not see the other programs to be clicked. To organize them, I tried right-clicking "Start>Open" but it only shows 55 icons. I have more than 350. I am not sure why many do not appear. Basically I want to be able to group similar programs, like games, audio/video programs, etc. Thanks.

[AlanHK]

Right-click on the Start button
Select "Explore all users"

That will open the folder with your Start menu icons.
You can move, rename and delete these icons and folders to your preference.

If you just do "Explore", you will get a similar window, for those programs installed to you , as opposed to "all users"


I clean up and reorganise these frequently, as just about every program you install likes to create a lot of useless icons and folders.

[DarrellS]

How did you get 350 icons on your desktop?

Almost all of the icons on your desktop are shortcuts. What I do is make folders (right click on desktop and choose new > folder) for different programs like PC Tools, Media Tools, etc... and drag my shortcuts into these folders. If there are programs that I use while Im on the internet or with other programs open then I drag those to my Quick Launch Bar so that my Desktop is not so cluttered.

I have 9 folders and 21 icons on my desktop. All the OS (my computer, my docs, windows explorer etc...) and folders are in the first row, video and audio shortcuts are in the second row and graphics and word processing in third row.

My copy of Windows 2000 has a problem with remembering icon locations so I have a program called layout that will remember and restore the icon layout when it gets messed up.

As for the start > right click > open thing. What you see is programs that put shortcuts in the start menu. Not all programs put a shortcut in the start menu even though they put a shortcut on the desktop. The programs you see in Start > Programs are the programs that you see in C:\My Programs. If you have Win Zip then you have a C:\Unzipped folder. I send shortcuts to the desktop from these folders and put them in the folders that I create on the desktop or to the quicklaunch bar so that everything is easily accessible.

[edong]

Thanks, guys.

I finally had a chance to do AlanHK's suggestion. It worked for the most part, but games I installed in C:\Games folder did not show up in the list although they are in Start>Programs (which I was trying to reduce the clutter of)

[Seeker47]

A lot depends on how often a program is used, and therefore how quickly and easily you need to get at it. I try to keep the Quick Launch area to a bare minimum, and not let the Systray get too overgrown either -- but that's just personal taste.

It seems to me there aren't that many options. You can group in categories, such as having any games clustered in a Games folder. But then you'd have to click on that icon to get at the various contents, and it's a pain to customize the appearance of those generic folders. I've also seen some utilities that create a "toolbar", usually vertically, along the left or right side of the screen. This groups by categories also: you click on one of the categories and it accordions out, displaying programs to choose from. That might be the only way to accommodate a a really large volume of programs . . . although I think 350 icons would greatly tax that arrangement as well. Can't identify a particular utility like this for you now, but I doubt it was freeware.