You can customize not only the Icons used for displaying folders in Windows Explorer, but also add a custom Description to the folder, displayed when using different Views in Explorer.

1. In the folder that needs to be customized create a file called: Desktop.ini

2. Enter the following information in this file: [.ShellClassInfo]
   InfoTip=<Your custom folder description when viewed in Web View>
   IconFile=%windir%\system32\shell32.dll
   IconIndex=41
   ConfirmFileOp=1
        The entry Iconfile points to the file that contains the icon you want displayed
        This particular file contains multiple icons.
        The entry Iconindex indicates which particular icon in the file you want displayed.
        Count starts at zero for the first icon in the file. Icon 41 is a little Tree.
        The following example points to a file that simply holds 1 icon.
        
        IconFile=desktop.ico
        IconIndex=0
   
        The entry ConfirmFileOp, when set to 0 (zero),
        will avoid the warning "You Are Deleting a System Folder"
        when deleting or moving the folder at hand.

3. In order to make the display functional, you need to set the "System" Attribute on the folder.
   Since Windows 2000 no longer has a possibility to set this through the GUI in Explorer, you will need to open a command processor window (cmd.exe) and use the following command to set this:
   
   attrib +s <drive:\path\foldernaam>

In Windows XP you can configure some of these items through Properties of the Folder and the using the Customize tab.