Windows 8 – How to Display Desktop Icons in Tile View

desktopiconswindows 8

I appear to have some how placed my icons on my desktop in Tile View. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to restore the icons to their normal appearance. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Here is a printscreen of a portion of my desktop so you can see what I'm talking about:

enter image description here

Best Answer

Solution

  1. Press Win+R, type regedit.exe, and click OK.
  2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop.
  3. Leave the registry editor windows open. Then, while pressing the Ctrl and Shift keys together, right-click the taskbar, and choose Exit Explorer from the context menu.
  4. Go back to the registry editor, and change the LogicalViewMode and Mode values to 3 and 1, respectively (i.e. the default values).
  5. Press Shift+Ctrl+Esc to bring up the Task Manager.
  6. Click on File > Run new task. Type explorer.exe, and press Enter.

Additional information

Here are the possible values:

LogicalViewMode | Value | Description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Details         |   1   | Details view
Tiles           |   2   | Tiles view
Icons           |   3   | Icons view
List            |   4   | List view (Windows 7 and later)
Content         |   5   | Content view (Windows 7 and later)

­

Mode            | Value | Description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Icon            |   1   | Medium-size icons
Small icon      |   2   | Small icons (seems unused)
List            |   3   | Object names are displayed in a list view
Details         |   4   | Object names and other selected information are shown
Thumbnail       |   5   | Thumbnail icons
Tiles           |   6   | Large icons
Thumbstrip      |   7   | Display icons in a filmstrip format (XP only)
Content         |   8   | Content mode (Windows 7 and later)

References

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