How to Assign a Custom Icon and Label to a Drive Letter

Article
01/07/2021

Specify a custom icon and label for a drive.

Instructions

Step 1: Replacing the standard drive icon with a custom icon in Windows 2000

To replace the standard drive icon with a custom icon in Windows 2000, add a subkey named for the drive letter to the following key.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
   Applications
      Explorer.exe
         Drives

The following example specifies a custom icon and label for the E: drive. The icon is in the C:\MyDir\MyDrive.exe file with a zero-based index of three.

For Windows 2000:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
   Applications
      Explorer.exe
         Drives
            E
               DefaultIcon
                  (Default) = C:\MyDir\MyDrive.exe,3
               DefaultLabel
                  (Default) = MyDrive

Step 2: Replacing the standard drive icon with a custom icon in all other versions of Windows

To replace the standard drive icon with a custom icon in all versions of Windows other than Windows 2000, add a subkey named for the drive letter to the following key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
   Software
      Microsoft
         Windows
            CurrentVersion
               Explorer
                  DriveIcons

The following example specifies a custom icon and label for the E: drive. The icon is in the C:\MyDir\MyDrive.exe file with a zero-based index of three.

For all other versions of Windows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
   Software
      Microsoft
         Windows
            CurrentVersion
               Explorer
                  DriveIcons
                     E
                        DefaultIcon
                           (Default) = C:\MyDir\MyDrive.exe,3
                        DefaultLabel
                           (Default) = MyDrive

Step 3: Calling the SHUpdateImage Event

In all versions of Windows, if you change a file type or drive icon you must also call SHUpdateImage to notify the Shell to update any icons that are currently displayed.

Remarks

The drive letter should not be followed by a colon (:). Add a DefaultIcon subkey to the drive letter subkey and set its default value to a string that contains the location of the icon. The first part of the string contains the fully-qualified path of the icon's file. If there is more than one icon in the file, the path is followed by a comma, and then by the zero-based index of the icon.

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