
Icons stored in the shell32.dll file %systemroot%\system32\ddores.dllĭdores.dll contains a lot of icons for hardware devices and resources, such as speakers, headphones, screens, computers, remotes, gaming pads, mice and keyboards, cameras, and printers. Inside it, you can find icons for the internet, devices, networks, peripherals, folders, and so on. Together with imageres.dll and ddores.dll, shell32.dll hosts one of the largest icon collections. The shell32.dll file also has lots of icons used in various parts of Windows 10, as well as in Windows 11. Icons stored in the imageres.dll file %systemroot%\system32\shell32.dll It has icons for different types of folders, hardware devices, peripherals, actions, and so on.
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The imageres.dll file contains many Windows 10 and Windows 11 icons, used almost everywhere in the operating system. Next, you can see our list of locations from Windows where you find DLL files containing icons: %systemroot%\system32\imageres.dll We tried to organize our list of default Windows 10 and Windows 11 icons, both by their DLL files location and by taking into consideration the primary purpose of the icons found inside the DLL files. In the next section, we show you where these DLLs with icons are found in Windows 10 and Windows 11. Most icons from Windows operating systems are stored inside DLL files. When you want to change the icon of a particular file, folder, or shortcut, you can just set its icon location to point to a specific DLL file and a specific icon from it. As a matter of fact, you could compare an icon DLL file with a library of icons.

The main advantage of a DLL file is being able to hold multiple icons inside. To solve this problem, instead of using ICO files to store icons, Windows uses DLL files (and sometimes, also EXE files). If Windows had an ICO file for each icon it uses, that would make for a considerable number of icon files. Both Windows 10 and Windows 11 have lots of applications, folders, files, and shortcuts, and many of them use unique icons. However, ICO files have a big disadvantage: they can hold only one icon. Icons are usually stored inside ICO files.
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%systemroot%\system32\accessibilitycpl.dll.Where are Windows default icons located?.
