How do I change the size of my desktop icons?

Raymond Chen

Occasionally, somebody asks how to change the size of the desktop icons, not because they want to change the size from the default, but rather because they somehow turned into giant marshmallow men and they want to get the default size back.

There are two ways to change the size of the desktop icons on Windows Vista:

• Click on the desktop, then hold the Control key while rotating the mouse wheel.
• Right-click on the desktop and choose an icon size from the View menu.

When people get into this state where the desktop icons are gargantuan, it’s usually due to a mouse that went berserk thanks to some sort of hardware problem such as a loose connection. By the time the hardware problem is fixed, the mouse has clicked and twirled randomly all over the screen, causing all sorts of havoc.

Raymond Chen

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