All my icons became shortcuts!

[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.

 

[wm_walsh]

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

 

[higgledy]

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

 

[Nightowl]

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