HideIcons

Hide Icons represents a compact and portable solution to hiding desktop icons, as the name implies. It is useful for older editions of Windows which do not come with this built-in option.
Since installation is not a prerequisite, you can simply drop the executable file on any spot on the hard drive and run it immediately.
It is also possible to save Hide Icons to a USB flash drive or other removable storage unit, in order to run it on any computer with minimum effort.
What's more important is that the Windows Registry area does not receive entry updates (therefore, reducing the risk of system errors), and files do not remain behind on the hard drive after removing the program.
Upon initialization, Hide Icons creates an icon in the system tray area, and its right-click menu represents the interface. Aside from the options available through the context menu, there is nothing else offered by Hide Icons.
All icons on the desktop are automatically hidden when the tool runs, and the only way to disable its status is by exiting Hide Icons. The other options enable Hide Icons to automatically run at system startup and in hidden form.
Hide Icons is very light on the system resources, as it barely uses CPU and system memory, so it does not interfere with the runtime of other active processes. It has a good response time and works well, without hanging, crashing or popping up error dialogs. Although it has not been updated for a very long while, Hide Icons offers users a simple solution to keep their desktop tidy.