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OT: Lost my Desktop Icons

Jafo said:
OK....what you're suffering from is a corrupted iconcache database.
You will need to hunt it down and simply delete it. Windows will re-create it for you....
C:\Users\ yourlogon\AppData\Local\iconcache.db

That "should" fix your problem [but being Windows nothing is guaranteed]...;)

Any shell enhancements can interfere with the drawing of the desktop...as part of their function....or disfunction, depending on success/competence. If the GUI enhancements are from Stardock you would be OK, but there are others out there which are not properly supported and are frequently broken by...good old Windows Updates...;)
Click to expand...
See post #10
 
OK....try killing your shell and reloading....
Ctrl-shift-esc ....and load Task Manager....look for 'explorer.exe' in the Processes tab ...click on 'end process'.....
...then click on File...new task [run] and type in 'explorer,exe' [without quotes]
...see if it helps.
 
Sorry, but none of the suggestions has had any affect. To be clear, the Icons aren't really gone, as you can see in this enlargement of my early screenshot.

Missing_Icons-2.jpg


. . .they are hidden behind a second "default" icon. I can't see any other way to correct this other than to do a re-installation of Win7 at this point.
 
Sometimes you need to destroy the village in order to save it.

I this case, it looks like your profile might be corrupted.

I suggest that you log in as the "Administrator" (or some other account that has admin rights) and back up your entire profile to someplace safe. You should see it in C:\Users\xxxxxx (you might need to go to into Tools, Folder options, View and uncheck the "hide" settings).

To delete the old profile, open "System Properties" and under the "Advanced" tab, pick the "User Profile", "Settings" button to display the system user profiles an delete the appropriate profile.

Then create a new profile via control panel / User Accounts (can be same username) and after you log in and establish the profile, move what you need from the old profile to the new one.

Before doing anything though, I recommend you run chkdsk /f from the command prompt to make sure your disk isn't having any issues.
 
A corrupted icon cache will still show icons...but they'll lose specific images...and be as those on top in yor screenie.
Looks like the os has an issue trying to draw them twice.
Do you have any enhancements...or is you os install 'vanilla'?
Another trick....go to control panel/display and resize icons larger....then reboot.
Reverse size if now ok.

Edit.....DONT raze the 'village'. It's poor advice akin to reformatting or reinstalling.
All are last resorts of the desperate.
 
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Jafo said:
A corrupted icon cache will still show icons...but they'll lose specific images...and be as those on top in yor screenie.
Looks like the os has an issue trying to draw them twice.
Do you have any enhancements...or is you os install 'vanilla'?
Click to expand...
It's a pretty basic Win7 installation.
 
falcon409 said:
No idea what that is or how to call it up.
Click to expand...


Open Task manager, click file, then click run new task when the dialog box opens type cmd in the box click ok. The command prompt window will open type sfc/scannow hit enter. It's supposed to check for file/system errors and if possible repair them. it can take a while to complete should tell you if it found and or fixed any errors. Good luck.
 
gradyhappyg said:
Open Task manager, click file, then click run new task when the dialog box opens type cmd in the box click ok. The command prompt window will open type sfc/scannow hit enter. It's supposed to check for file/system errors and if possible repair them. it can take a while to complete should tell you if it found and or fixed any errors. Good luck.
Click to expand...
Running that now.

Nothing Found: "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations".
 
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Here's a better view of what's going on with these stupid icons. I was successful in getting the true icon to enlarge while leaving the "other" icon smaller. This reminded me of the shortcut "arrows" that were always part of a shortcut and so I set out to remove the "arrows". No joy. . .that didn't work either so I really am at a stalemate here. As I said, the shortcuts work fine and I guess I could just accept that this is where I am with this and move on. Ughhh!:dizzy:

Missing_Icons-3.jpg
 
It seems to me, after seeing the enlarged picture of your icons, that the problem is not the icons, but more the little arrow indicating it's a link... and this arrow has somehow been replaced by the "default unknown" icon...
Could you check this page, which explains how to get rid of the little arrows, to see if this has any effect on your problem ?
http://www.windowscentral.com/how-get-rid-shortcut-arrows-windows-10
(it's for win10, but from what I understood in the text, it could work with previous Windows versions too... and the change is easy to revert anyways)
 
Can the smaller default icons be moved to a different location on the desktop, leaving the larger correct image icons in place.
 
Possible solution but from VISTA forum.

This is an involved solution for VISTA but it sounds like what you may have going on.

Everything seemed fine except for the Desktop icons. This was something I’ve never seen before – each of the original icons had a generic icon laid over the top of it – like two layers of icons, and you could see the original icon a little bit around the edges of the generic one. I tried right-clicking on Properties to change the icons back to what they were, but no dice. Couldn’t change them at all.

Then I went to your Tutorial on deleting the icon cache, but it didn’t work. In fact, I did it twice and each time, the icon cache got larger! ( It went from 3,648kb, to 4,043kb, to 4,046kb.) I rebooted after each attempt and deleted the icon cache.db file from the Recycle Bin after each reboot.

The last thing I tried was changing the Display color setting from 32 to 16 and back again. I saw the icons move slightly as the changes were occurring, but the problem didn’t get fixed.
Click to expand...

Problem:
http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/222173-help-ive-got-double-layer-desktop-icons.html

[url]http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67615-shortcut-arrow.html





[/URL]
 
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