Question

I got access to Visual studio 2012 a couple of days back and I found that the solution explorer is a bit too minimalistic for my taste.
With most icons grey and black , I have to make an extra effort to find out the file that I was looking for.

Is there a way to revert back to 2010 style icons for files ?

Answer 1

The only “solution” I know if is to uninstall Visual Studio 2012.

The problem comes down to how the icons are registered. When 2012 is installed, all the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT icon registrations are over-written with 2012. Conceptually you could edit these registrations to “restore” or change the icon. For example, .csproj files are linked to the first icon in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC#\VCSPackages\csproj.dll file. You could change that so the icon points to the first icon in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC#\VCSPackages\csproj.dll instead. A .reg file to set that value could be created to set that value, for example:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.Launcher.csproj.11.0\DefaultIcon]
@="c:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\\VC#\\VCSPackages\\csproj.dll,0

That, when double-clicked, would “restore” the icon to the 2010 icon. But, you’d have to do that for each and every icon you want to “restore”.

Update:

I suppose you could write some code to search the registry and replace icons that point to 11.0 files and replace them with 10.0 files. For example:

const string vsDirectory = "c:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\\";
int index = vsDirectory.IndexOf("10.0\\", StringComparison.Ordinal);

var keyNames = Registry.ClassesRoot.GetSubKeyNames();
foreach (var name in keyNames.Where(name => name.StartsWith("VisualStudio.Launcher.")))
{
    using(RegistryKey key = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(name+@"\DefaultIcon"))
    {
        if (key == null) continue;
        var value = key.GetValue(null).ToString();
        if (!value.StartsWith(vsDirectory)) continue;
        var sb = new StringBuilder(value);
        var newValue = sb.Replace("10.0", "11.0", index, 4).ToString();
        var elements = newValue.Split(',');
        if (elements.Length <= 0) continue;
        var filename = elements[0];
        if (File.Exists(filename))
        {
            key.SetValue(null, sb.ToString());
        }
    }
}

This particular bit of code only changes class root keys associated with VisualStudio.Launcher and only changes icons that are contained in a file within the “c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\” directory and have a corresponding 10.0 file. i.e. it won’t change the icon of a .cs file. To include those files change "VisualStudio.Launcher." to "VisualStudio." It also assumes icon indexes haven’t changed from 10 to 11.

I don’t have 10 and 11 installed together, so I didn’t test the SetValue of this code. If you use the code, you need to make sure your install is in “c:\Program Files (x86)”.

No warranties expressed nor implied. Use at your own risk and only after backing up. If it does what you want, let me know.