Restore Internet Explorer Icon on Windows 7 Desktop

Microsoft removed this feature to comply with all the legal battles they’ve had, and their alternate suggestion is to create a standard shortcut to iexplore.exe on the Desktop, but it’s not the same thing. We’ve got a registry hack to bring it back.

Launch Regedit.exe using the Start Menu search box, and then navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}

Right-click on the key on the left-hand pane, choose Export, and save it to a .REG file (say, ie-guid.reg)
Open up the REG file using Notepad…
From the Edit menu, click Replace, and replace every occurrence of the following GUID string


{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}

… with a custom GUID string, such as:

{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D}

Save the REG file and close Notepad, and then double-click on the file to merge the contents to the registry. Either re-open the registry editor, or use the F5 key to reload everything with the new changes (this step is important).

Now you can navigate downto the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D} Shellex ContextMenuHandlers ieframe

Double-click on the (default) key in the right-hand pane and set its data as:

{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}

With this done, press F5 on the desktop and you’ll see the Internet Explorer icon on windows 7 desktop.

The icon appears incomplete without the Properties command in right click menu, so keep reading.


Final Registry Hack Adjustments

Click on the following key, which should still be viewable in your Registry editor window from the last step.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D}

Double-click LocalizedString in the right-hand pane and type the following data to rename the icon.

Internet Explorer

Select the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D}shell

Add a subkey and name it as Properties, then select the Properties key, double-click the (default) value and type the following:

P&roperties

Create a String value named Position, and type the following data

bottom

Under Properties, create a subkey and name it as Command, and then set its (default) value as follows:

control.exe inetcpl.cpl

Navigate down to the following key, and then delete the value named LegacyDisable

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT CLSID {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D} shell OpenHomePage

Now head to the this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Explorer Desktop NameSpace

Create a subkey named {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30301D} (which is the custom GUID that we used earlier in this article.)

Press F5 to refresh the Desktop, and here is how the Internet Explorer icon would look like, finally.

That’s it! It only took 24 steps, but you made it through to the end—of course, you could just download the registry hack and get the icon back with a double-click.