Let your disk icons in Windows XP show how much space is left

Here is a typical Windows XP PC showing a selection of disk drives. We double-clicked the My Computer icon on the Windows Desktop and this is what popped up. Yours will no doubt look different, as what shows up here depends on the number of installed drives and how they are set up. It’s useful as far as it goes but determining how full any of these disks are requires right-clicking on the relevant drive icon and choosing Properties from the pop-up menu. Instead, let’s find and install Vista Drive Icon and use that.

Launch a web browser and go to the Sourceforge website. When the page loads, click the Vista Drive Icon download link. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder.

Now locate and double-click the downloaded file. If any security warnings appear, click Run to continue. Follow the default installation settings and at the end click the Finish button to run the program. Double-click the My Computer icon again and you will see the old XP icons have been replaced by new Vista/7-style versions, which include horizontal bars to show how full each disk is. If you can’t see them, open the View menu and click Refresh and they will appear.