Drive Icon Changer: Simple Tool for Custom Drive Icons

How to Use Drive Icon Changer to Personalize Windows Drives

What it does

Drive Icon Changer lets you assign a custom icon to a drive (local, USB, or external) so it appears with that icon in File Explorer.

Before you start

• Backup: copy any important data on the drive.
• Icon file: prepare an .ico file (recommended 256×256 or 128×128). PNG/EXE/ DLL icons may not work directly.

Step-by-step (prescriptive)

1. Plug in the drive you want to customize.
2. Run Drive Icon Changer with administrator rights (right-click → Run as administrator).
3. In the app, select the target drive from the drive list.
4. Click the button to choose an icon and browse to your .ico file.
5. Confirm the selection and click Apply (or Change).
6. Wait for the tool to write the autorun.inf or registry change it uses, then safely eject and reconnect the drive or restart Explorer to see the change.

If the icon doesn’t appear

• Refresh File Explorer (F5) or restart Explorer.exe.
• Clear icon cache: open Command Prompt (admin) and run:
  ie4uinit -showtaskkill /IM explorer.exe /Fdel %localappdata%\IconCache.db /Astart explorer.exe

• Ensure autorun.inf is present at the drive root and points to the chosen icon; Windows may ignore autorun on removable drives depending on policy.
• Verify the .ico file is accessible on the drive (not on another removable medium).

Revert changes

• Use Drive Icon Changer to remove custom icon, or delete autorun.inf and clear icon cache, then reconnect the drive.

Notes & cautions

• Some corporate or Windows policies can block custom drive icons.
• Be cautious when running third-party utilities as admin; use trusted sources and scan installers.

If you want, I can provide exact autorun.inf content, a small script to apply icons to multiple drives, or recommend tools for creating .ico files.