Memory Stick Icons - What is Vista doing????

OK, I've installed a clean install of Vista on my Vaio FE. I downloaded the Memory stick drivers for the FE-890E and they work for reading media.

My problem is I cannot change the default memory stick reader icon.

I located and downloaded the snymsicon.dll file and installed it into my C:\windows drive.

I've set the registry value
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\AutoplayHandlers\DeviceGroups\MemoryStick\Icons

to

%SystemRoot%\snymsico.dll,0

This set the icon to the blue-ish icon, not the default icon I see on the FE models in the store. I've found that those machines have this registry value set to
%SystemRoot%\snymsico.dll,1

So, I've tried to update this value to no effect. If I manually set
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\FlashMedia\MemoryStickDevice0\5&15b967c7&0&002\Device Parameters

this will change the icon to what I want.

However, as soon as I reboot, Vista ALWAYS!!! sets this back to
%SystemRoot%\snymsico.dll,0.

If I reboot into Safe Mode, then my change is retained but as soon as I do a normal reboot, my change is lost. So how in the world is Vista automatically resetting this registry change and how do I stop this????

Note that I have tried to disable User Access Control and this did not work. I've read something about Registry Virtualization in Vista and suspect this could be the issue but I do not fully understand what this is or how to modify this.

 

It sounds like your familiar with registry editing. Check out the 2nd message here. Sounds like it might apply.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=559007&SiteID=1

There's another link there to another MSDN forum. There may be more info available there. Sounds very restrictive that you can't change an icon.

And thanks for the post. I appreciate hearing about experiences with Vista.

 

Do you mean you want the black MS duo icon? I applied the memory stick icon patch from the EU site and it worked flawlessly.

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/OS/Vist...nRegistryPatch_1.0.1.9110-061109/snymsico.msi

 

Thanks. I checked out that one MS forum link prior to my original post. It led me to the Virtualization section in the registry but this had no entries for this setting so that is out.

outie, that is not the icon I was looking for. I wanted the stock icon that a new FE series will display.

Actually, it is not even the icon itself that is bothering me, but the fact that I cannot change an entry in the registry and have it stick after reboot. I change the setting and everything works as expected. Then I reboot and Vista sets it back.

I want to know why and where this original value is being stored and what mechanism in Vista is setting it back!!

I'm even more confused becasue if I boot into Safe mode, my registry changes do not get reset but as soon as a do a normal reboot, Vista rolls back my change.

Since in safe mode, the Memory stick driver is not being loaded, this makes me think there is something in the driver that is setting this registry value. So Vista is not the culprit, but the driver is. I have yet to find out how to verify or change this though.