Windows XP desktop annoyance

Windows XP on my 2 computers has an irritating quirk I haven't been able to figure out or find any useful information about that annoys me to no end, and maybe someone here can help me.

I have the old-school habit of liking my drive icons on the desktop (probably owing back to my Atari ST days). And I like when I click on a drive icon (technically, a "shortcut"), that the window opens at a specific place on the desktop at a specific size, in an overlapping scheme that makes drag and drop easy. Always worked fine in Windows 95, 98, 2000 and ME. But for some reason I'm unable to fathom, Windows XP moves and resizes my drive windows, as well as the Explorer and "My Computer", seemingly at random. Most of the time I never know where on the desktop the window will open and it's annoying having to resize and reposition them all the time. The icon positions are never affected, just where their windows open at.

The only thing I've been able to figure out is that it seems to happen almost everytime I insert a CD/DVD in the drive or plug in a USB storage device (although those don't seem to be the only times it happens). I've tried about every setting I could find for the Autoplay to no avail.

If anybody knows a way to stop this, I'd be grateful for any advice.

 

You can use a script to open Internet Explorer to your desired drive and changing the size and position within the script.
You can make a different script for each drive or open several drives within the same script.
Open the attachment and change "sPath" to the drive or folder you would like to open. You can also change the size and position of the windows to your liking.
When you are through change the extension to vbs. Double click the script to run and open your drives.

 

Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer?
abri

 

If you feel so inclined to try it, hold down CTRL while closing a window to see if it helps with saving of window settings. Not really designed for Windows XP but may work all the same.

 

Using an instance of Internet Explorer to view the drives. Same functionality as Windows Explorer. Doing it this way will give you the flexibility to position and size each window opened.

I think it sounds like he would like to open up these drives so the 2 windows are sized and positioned next to each other.

 

Which is precisely why I said that. The idea is to save window size, and position. That particular feature is not supposed to be limited to IE.

Thankfully, Vista does not have this problem.