In this part 9 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue my discussion of the most important Desktop Personalization settings.

Right click on your Desktop, left click ‘Personalize’ and ‘Change desktop icons’. By checking or un checking the check boxes of the listed Desktop icons you can add them to or remove them from your Desktop.

You can also change the appearance of the Desktop icons you select by highlighting them and clicking on ‘Change icon’. Scroll through the menu and highlight and click on any icon that interests you and click OK. Should you want to reinstate the default icon but have forgotten which one it was, simply highlight the icon you want restored and click ‘Restore Default’.

By the way, you can change the appearance of any Desktop icon (program, document, Web shortcut and Folder) by right clicking on it, clicking on ‘Properties’, ‘Customize’ and ‘Change icon’.

Note: I recommend you do not remove your Recycle Bin from your Desktop. And this is why.

If you become involved in deleting a significant number of files and photos particularly from an external hard drive, you may want to adjust the size of the space available in your Recycle Bin for deletions. In fact if you’re going to delete an extraordinary number of files, particularly photo files, and you’re absolutely sure you’ll have no need to restore any of them, consider right clicking on your Recycle Bin, highlighting your external hard drive and clicking on ‘Don't move files to the Recycle Bin, Remove files immediately when deleted’ and then click Apply.

By not moving the deleted files to your Recycle Bin, when you delete the files from your external hard drive the deletion will take much less time and you will not be in danger of overfilling your Recycle Bin.

I suggest that by having the Recycle icon on your Desktop, you’ll have a better chance of remembering to adjust the Recycle bin settings before you make a significant deletion.

Once your purge is complete you can return to Recycle Bin Properties, highlight your external hard drive and click on ‘Custom size’ to return to collecting deletions in your Recycle Bin.

Also I recommend if as I am you’re paranoid about permanently deleting files and appreciate the security of having your deletions linger as long as possible in your Recycle Bin, you highlight your local Disk C and increase the space available for deletions by clicking on ‘Custom Size’ and adding MB’s.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.