desktop-iconswindows 8windows 8.1
I'm using windows 8.1 and want to replace all my current icon set with Free File Icons. How to do that?
These are the list of free icons offered in the set:
AAC, AI, AIFF, AVI, C, CPP, CSS, DAT, DMG, DOC, EXE, FLV, GIF, H, HPP, HTML, ICS, JAVA, JPG, KEY, MID, MP3, MP4, MPG, PDF, PHP, PNG,
PPT, PSD, PY, QT, RAR, RB, RTF, SQL, TIFF, TXT, WAV, XLS, XML, YML,
ZIP
Yes, it is possible, but there's only one way that I know of since they removed the colours advanced settings dialog (possibly third party utils to do it too).
Press 
+R and type regedit (or look for it in Apps).
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics:
There you need to edit IconSpacing and IconVerticalSpacing, the former is for the horizontal spacing and the latter for the vertical one (they range -480 to -2730).
For the horizontal space, the closer to -2730, the more space between icons and vice versa (but here you're changing the size of the box surrounding the icon:
-2730:
-480:
The same for vertical space, but you're changing the separation between the boxes that surround icons; for example at -480 they overlap:
-2730:
-480:
To apply the changes the only way I know is logging off and back on again and then moving one icon, restarting Explorer doesn't cut it this time.
If you have access to a Windows 7 machine I'd say it's easier to change there the spacing using the regular options in the advanced settings dialog for colours, and then looking at the registry for the values you'd like to translate to your Windows 8 machine.
In any case these would be some of the values to help you edit those values:
...
45: -1155
44: -1140
43: -1125
42: -1110
41: -1095
...
By the way, another useful value to change there is BorderWidth that controls the width of the borders of windows.
You must download the ISO with the MUI packs from MSDN
mu_windows_8_1_language_pack_x86_dvd_2706085.iso
mu_windows_8_1_language_pack_x64_dvd_2706084.iso
, mount the ISO and copy the MUI you want to install to the HDD. Now rename the CAB to lp.mlc and make a double click on the file to run setup.
Best Answer
The article How to Change the Default Icon of a File Extension in Windows 7 lists two methods.
Method 1 : Use the program FileTypesMan.
Method 2 : Directly change the information in the registry key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ext