All my icons became shortcuts!

[Guest higgledy]

I am running XP Professional. I do not know how this happened but

every single icon on my system changed to a shortcut icon. Everything

still works the same but I'd like to change them back to there correct

view. Does anyone know what happened and how I can fix it? Thank you.

Higgledy.

[Guest wm_walsh@hotmail.com]

Re: All my icons became shortcuts!

 

Hi!

> I am running XP Professional. I do not know how this happened

> but every single icon on my system changed to a shortcut icon.

> Does anyone know what happened and how I can fix it?

 

Your computer's icon cache file has become corrupt. One way of fixing

this involves using the Microsoft PowerToy known as TweakUI.

 

There exist two versions of TweakUI...one for Windows XP only and

another that is officially for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 but works fine

on XP as far as I can tell. It is the older version (1.33) that you

want, as it definitely contains the option to rebuild the icon cache.

 

You might also try going into your Windows directory (with the options

to view hidden and protected system files turned on) and deleting the

"ShellIconCache" file. Windows may not let you delete it, but it's

worth a shot anyway and could fix your problem without the use of

TweakUI.

 

William

[Guest higgledy]

Re: All my icons became shortcuts!

 

On Sep 26, 2:34 pm, wm_wa...@hotmail.com wrote:

> Your computer's icon cache file has become corrupt. One way of fixing

> this involves using the Microsoft PowerToy known as TweakUI.

>

> There exist two versions of TweakUI...one for Windows XP only and

> another that is officially for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 but works fine

> on XP as far as I can tell. It is the older version (1.33) that you

> want, as it definitely contains the option to rebuild the icon cache.

>

> You might also try going into your Windows directory (with the options

> to view hidden and protected system files turned on) and deleting the

> "ShellIconCache" file. Windows may not let you delete it, but it's

> worth a shot anyway and could fix your problem without the use of

> TweakUI.

>

> William

 

Thanks for the advice. I cannot find ShellIconCache anywhere on my

Windows directory. This problem is with my work PC, I cannot install

TweakUI because I am not an Administrator.

 

But I did mess with the display adapter settings. I don't know why but

now all icons display normally except those icons displayed on a

mounted network drive. I really did not change any settings on my

adapter, I just changed to a different resolution, then changed back

to the original. Wierd.

 

Higgledy

[Guest Nightowl]

Re: All my icons became shortcuts!

 

higgledy <higgledy@gmail.com> wrote on Wed, 26 Sep 2007:

>Thanks for the advice. I cannot find ShellIconCache anywhere on my

>Windows directory. This problem is with my work PC, I cannot install

>TweakUI because I am not an Administrator.

 

That's probably because in XP it's called IconCache.db and is usually to

be found in your %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data folder

:-)

>

>But I did mess with the display adapter settings. I don't know why but

>now all icons display normally except those icons displayed on a

>mounted network drive. I really did not change any settings on my

>adapter, I just changed to a different resolution, then changed back

>to the original. Wierd.

 

Glad you've got it almost back to normal. Another way to force the icon

cache to rebuild itself is to go to the Advanced Appearance tab in

Display Properties, choose Icon from the dropdown list and change the

value by 1 -- if it's set to 32, change it to 33, for example. Then OK

your way out. This will probably mess up your desktop shortcut layout,

but don't worry -- go back and reset the icon size to what it was

originally and again OK your way out.

 

Might be worth a try just before you shut down for the day and get those

last few icons back to what they should be :-)

 

--

Nightowl