Floating ICQ Contacts
March 17, 2008
Didn’t you remember this cool feature in an old ICQ version, which enabled you to add floating contacts? And you missed it in the newer versions?
“Icon on Top (On)” – You can use this option with specific users on your Contact List, so that their names always appear on your screen even when the ICQ program is minimized.
Well, you can achieve a similar result, by using desktop shortcuts. 
Therefore simply rightclick on your desktop. A context menu will open, letting you choose from various options. Here, choose New -> Shortcut.
A window will open letting you type in the location for the shortcut to lead to. Type in:
icq:send_message?uin=[your contact’s ICQ#]
For the [your contacts ICQ#] you can type in a ICQ number, an AOL screenname, or even a phone number with the full country code.
When you’re done, click Next. You will now be asked for a name for your new shortcut. Here, type in your contacts name on your contact list, or if you want, even something completely different. You should use your contacts nickname, but it really doesn’t matter, it’s your choice, you know. 
When you’re done, click Finish.
Now, you’ve got a working shortcut on your desktop, which will, if you double click it, open the message window for the choosen contact. But, you know, this default web shortcut icon is not that good. So now, rightclick on your new shortcut and select Properties. A window will open, letting you choose different things. Here, click on Change Icon, and another window will open. Maybe a confirmation window will pop up, telling you an icon could not be found. Ignore it in this case and simply click OK.
Now we have this window, where we can choose from various default Windows icons, but that’s not really what we want. There is an input bar, where we will type in:
C:\Program Files\ICQ6\services\icqApp\ver1\theme\IMAGES\Common\IcqIcons\WindowsIcons\win-icon-message.png
Then we click on OK.
Note: This will only work with ICQ6. If you haven’t installed ICQ into C:\Program Files\ICQ6\ or if you are using a localized version of Windows XP, this directory might be different. You will have to replace that part of the file path with the path you have choosen while installing ICQ.
Filed under: ICQ | Comments (3)
dear dorian,
i have looked through every possible answer through technical forums and noting answers my problem.
i am an old ICQ user, but i’ve stopped using it for some time, so not only i forgot my password, i couldn’t retrieve my password because i also forgot my old email, but i am in urge to get my old ICQ list back, there are some important people in there…in this case, what can i do? or would you be so kind to give me some assistance? thank you and sincerely yours.
I know this is 3 years old, but i figure it may be useful for people that google the same issue.
It is impossible to retrieve a old icq password without access to the old email thats associated with the UIN.
Back in the day i used ‘?’ as a password however at some point they disallowed the use of this as a password and i was thus locked out of my UIN. In the end i had to re-register the hotmail account i used with icq and use the retrive password function when hotmail finally deleted the old account, it did not work by entering the email, i had to use the UIN to get a mail sent to my old email.
On the topic of the contacts list, it seems to have been deleted as i have yet to get any of the contacts back.
1. This post is not about recovering old ICQ accounts.
2. It is not possible, to retrieve your password, you can only get a new one. Go to https://www.icq.com/password/ and follow the instructions. Another method will not work to recover your account.
3. Please always choose a hard to guess and secure password, if someone accessed your account, changed your password and removed your email address, there’s not much you can do.
4. If your account was registered before 2002, your contact list is missing and you did not use ICQ 2001b to upload your contact list, when that version was released in November 2001, this is because it used to be stored on your computer’s hard drive in older versions, and if you do not have that hard drive anymore, your contact list cannot be recovered.