By default, Windows 10 does not offer you an option to change a DVD drive's icon. But this limitation can be easily bypassed with a simple Registry tweak. In this article, we will see how to change the icon of your DVD drive device displayed in the This PC folder.
With Registry editing, you can make Windows 10 show a customized icon for the DVD drive installed in your PC. Here is how.
- Open Registry Editor. If you are not familiar with Registry Editor, see this excellent tutorial.
- Go to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons
Tip: You can access any desired Registry key with one click.
Note: If the Shell Icons key does not exist, just create it.
- Create a new string value at the above key called 11 by right clicking in the right pane and choosing New -> Expandable String value. Set its value data to the path of your icon file. I will use the CD drive icon from Windows Vista, which I placed in c:\icons:
C:\icons\Vista CD.ico
See the following screenshot:
- Restart Explorer. Alternatively, instead of restarting Explorer.exe, you can also log off and log back in to your Windows 10 user account.
Before:
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
The above tutorial doesn’t work on Windows 10! I have repeated all steps 3 times and I am following it correctly with no mistakes. Any ideas?
I am sorry, but you did something wrong.
I just checked with the latest Windows build 15025, the tweak still works as expected.
Tweak doesn’t work on build 14393
No, it works.
Doesn’t work on Build 14393.970. Unless Blu-Ray drive has a different number as you said enter 11
Tried it on 3 versions of windows 10 including the latest 2004
Does nothing
It works only for CD drive not for DVD
Try this, in the section titled “Change an Individual Drive Icon by Editing the Registry”. I just did it on Win 10 build 19044.
https://winaero.com/change-drive-icon-in-windows-10-with-a-custom-ico-file/
Does not work in Windows 11, :-(