Add Internet Explorer 7 Icon to the Desktop in Windows Vista

The main benefit to using this icon instead of a shortcut is that you can quickly get to the Internet Options page by right-clicking and choosing Properties.

You'll notice that you can also use "Start Without Add-ons", which is helpful for troubleshooting problems.

To add this icon back, we'll need to use a registry hack. You can either follow along and manually create the registry entries, or you can skip down further and just download the registry file.

Manual Registry Hack

Open regedit.exe using the Start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel

In the right-hand pane, add a new 32-bit DWORD value with the following name and value:

Key Name: {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}

Value: 0

You should be able to right-click on the desktop and choose Refresh, and the new icon should show up.