How To Change Drive Icon On Windows 10?

There are plethora of reasons why Windows is a popular choice among users. One of them being that it is highly customization, as you get plenty of options to alter settings for enhanced performance and better appearance of your system. However, the sad part is, there are still a few things that are not allowed to change by default. One of them is changing drive icon. However, just  like every technical issue, there is a workaround for it as well. To do this, you need to make changes to your registry files from registry editor.

Note: Don’t perform these steps unless you know about Registry Editor, since it is the key to make changes in the system and one mistake mess up your Windows.

Tips to Change Drive Icon on Windows 10

In this post, we have mentioned the steps to change drive icon in Windows 10.

Change Drive Icon Using Registry Editor

Registry Editor is a tool which is used to make critical changes in settings and functionality of Windows. To change the drive icon, follow these steps:

1. Go to Start and type Regedit in the search box to open Registry Editor.

Note: Press Windows and R to open Run Box, type regedit.

2.  You will get a prompt “Do you want this app to make changes to this device?”, click Yes to confirm.

    3.Once you get Registry Editor window, locate to the following key from the left hand side of the panel:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons

4. Once you have located DriveIcons key, right-click the DriveIcons key and select New -> Key.

5. Now, name the new key with the drive letter you want to change. We are changing drive icon for  C drive, so we are naming it C.

6. Right-click the C key and choose New>Key to create another key inside the C key.  Name the new key “DefaultIcon.”
7.  Select the “DefaultIcon” key from the left panel and then,double-click the (Default) value in the right hand side of the panel. It will open its properties (Edit String) in another window.

8. We are using a ghosts-chase.ico file as icon so in the “Edit String” window, under value data, type this full path, for example: “C:\Users\srishti.sisodia\Desktop\Images\ghost-chase.ico” for the  ICO file, which you want to use as your icon into the “Value data” box and then click “OK.”

Once it’s done, the changes will take effect, without restarting the PC. To see the changes, open file explorer and look for the changed drive icon.