After using Windows Vista for a few weeks, I was increasing getting annoyed with the size of the desktop icons.  I looked on almost every dialog box and setting, but could not find the solution to reducing the size of the icons.  However quite by accident I discovered that the icons could be changed very easily.

Quite by accident as I was deleting some unused icons from the desktop, the icons got smaller - apparently all by themselves.  I tried everything to replicate the resize, but couldn't get it to do what I wanted.

I then remembered that I had accidentally moved the wheel on the mouse.  So I tried that, just rotating the wheel on its own didn't resize the icons.  As I was selecting icons to be deleted at the time, I was holding down the CTRL key on the keyboard.  So there was the solution.

Simply by holding down the CTRL key and using the wheel on the mouse, you can make the icons go bigger or smaller.  Why couldn't Microsoft document this?  It wouldn't have been so bad if there was a control panel application that would control the size - I would have found that.  But to rely on a wheeled mouse is plain daft.

I have since worked out that holding the CTRL key and wheeling the mouse can change the size and view of the Windows Explorer listings.  Ideal for previewing photos or reducing the thumbnails down to a list view in an instant.