The Windows XP Desktop & Icons - Tutorial Part 1

The first part of the tutorial we will have a look at the Desktop, introduce you to icons and the taskbar.

Below in fig 1.1 you can see an example of the Windows XP desktop, when you first switch on your machine and Windows XP loads it usually looks similar to that shown in our example, although Windows XP by default has a picture for the desktop background.

Desktop refers to the main background area (in our example the white area), you can customise your desktop by adding background pictures, changing the background colour, changing the size of the icons, and more.

Introduction to Icons
Icons are small graphical images that can represent your computer's programs, files, folders and printers amongst other things (see fig 1.1).

To activate the program/file/folder that an icon represents you simply double click (two clicks in quick succession) on it with the left mouse button, this will activate the icon and either start a program or open a file/folder.

The icons on your desktop can be renamed by right clicking on them and selecting rename, similarly they can be deleted by right clicking and selecting delete.

It's possible to create your own icons for programs, files, folders, etc.
See our guide to creating desktop shortcuts in our tips and tricks section.

In our example we have two icons, the outlook icon is for example purposes only, by default you will usually just have the recycle bin icon which is explained below:

Recycle Bin
When you delete a file, Windows XP will place the file into the recycle bin instead of deleting it altogether, this allows you to restore the file in case you deleted it by mistake. For example say you deleted a file by accident you could double click on the recycle bin icon to see its contents, and then restore the file back to where you deleted it from by right clicking on it and then selecting restore from the menu that appears.

Note: some files may be too big to be stored in the recycle bin, but Windows XP should warn you if you delete a file that cannot be restored.

Keeping the Desktop tidy
The more you use Windows XP the more your desktop may start to fill up with icons, either because you install more software or you create your own icons.

Windows XP can automatically align and sort your desktop icons to keep the desktop tidy, to achieve this click the right mouse button anywhere on the desktop and a menu will appear (similar to that shown in fig 1.2), hover the mouse pointer over Arrange Icons By and a submenu will appear, from here you can sort your desktop icons by name, size, type and last modified date. Selecting the Auto Arrange option will automatically align your desktop icons every time you add one to the desktop.

The Desktop Cleanup Wizard will remove any desktop shortcuts that have never been used to a new folder on your desktop called Unused Desktop Shortcuts.