dead icons

[franknark]

A Vista SP1 Home Premium problem - 9 live icons covering 9 dead icons:

Several days ago I had a desktop with 9 live, working icons at the bottom of
the desktop. ie: recycle bin, computer, network, control panel, etc. The
9th icon was a folder called 'powershell'.

Several days ago I deleted the 'powershell' folder, and, underneath that
folder, was surprised to find a dead copy of the 'powershell' folder. The
deleted 'powershell' folder was in the recycle bin, and an undeleted dead
copy on the desktop.

This dead copy cannot be accessed with selection, left-click, or right-click
operations - so the 'Properties' info cannot be displayed.

Left, right, up, down arrow keys cannot move an icon selection area to this
dead icon.

A desktop refresh has no affect - a restart has no affect.

The C:\Users\frank\Desktop directory list does not show the dead folder.

Creating a new desktop folder with the same name 'powershell' does not upset
vista. This can be done either on top of the dead folder or somewhere else
on the desktop. Deleting the live 'powershell' has no affect on the dead
'powershell' folder.

It turns out that all 9 live icons were covering 9 dead icons. When a
selection area is drawn around the 9 icons, and the area with 9 icons moved
up to the middle of the screen, the 9 dead icons remain. None of them can be
accessed or deleted.

Any suggestions about getting rid of the dead icons?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tim Bird]

Is your desktop wallpaper a screenshot of your desktop?

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Try a different desktop background image.

 

[Malke]

A Vista SP1 Home Premium problem - 9 live icons covering 9 dead icons:

(snip)

You've got an active conversation with a possilble fix about this going on
in microsoft.public.windows.vista.file_management. You should continue
there instead of multiposting.

Please don't multipost; it makes more work for everyone and will get you
*less* help, not more. See this for why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm - multiposting

Malke

 

[nak]

Is your desktop wallpaper a screenshot of your desktop?

*chuckles*

 

[Chad Harris]

A Vista SP1 Home Premium problem - 9 live icons covering 9 dead icons:

Several days ago I had a desktop with 9 live, working icons at the bottom
of
the desktop. ie: recycle bin, computer, network, control panel, etc.
The
9th icon was a folder called 'powershell'.

Several days ago I deleted the 'powershell' folder, and, underneath that
folder, was surprised to find a dead copy of the 'powershell' folder.
The
deleted 'powershell' folder was in the recycle bin, and an undeleted dead
copy on the desktop.

This dead copy cannot be accessed with selection, left-click, or
right-click
operations - so the 'Properties' info cannot be displayed.

Left, right, up, down arrow keys cannot move an icon selection area to
this
dead icon.

A desktop refresh has no affect - a restart has no affect.

The C:\Users\frank\Desktop directory list does not show the dead folder.

Creating a new desktop folder with the same name 'powershell' does not
upset
vista. This can be done either on top of the dead folder or somewhere
else
on the desktop. Deleting the live 'powershell' has no affect on the dead
'powershell' folder.

It turns out that all 9 live icons were covering 9 dead icons. When a
selection area is drawn around the 9 icons, and the area with 9 icons
moved
up to the middle of the screen, the 9 dead icons remain. None of them can
be
accessed or deleted.

Any suggestions about getting rid of the dead icons?

Hi franknark--

I had to smile. This brings back some fond memories of a situation I had
back in the days of the dreaded mother of all memory leaking OS's --ME. XP
and Vista can leak memory, and theoretically so can Win 7 but in 6 months of
Win7 I haven't seen it. I don't know if you know the old old classic movie
"Bodie Snatchers" where these pods kept begetting more pods, but I once had
a zillion icons on my desktop with ME, and every time I deleted some I got
more.

Here's what I think will beat this. Simply F8 and go into Safe Mode and you
should be able to lasso the icons you want to delete or click them holding
down the ctrl key and then hit the shift+delete keys at the same time.

If that doesn't work, there are file shreader/removal tools that should do
it, and Doug Knox has a possible method that could apply to files in Vista.

http://www.google.com/search?q=dele...rlz=1I7GGLL_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=file+removal+tool&aq=f&oq=


http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_undeletable_file.htm

Good luck,

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

A Vista SP1 Home Premium problem - 9 live icons covering 9 dead icons:

Several days ago I had a desktop with 9 live, working icons at the bottom
of
the desktop. ie: recycle bin, computer, network, control panel, etc.
The
9th icon was a folder called 'powershell'.

Several days ago I deleted the 'powershell' folder, and, underneath that
folder, was surprised to find a dead copy of the 'powershell' folder.
The
deleted 'powershell' folder was in the recycle bin, and an undeleted dead
copy on the desktop.

This dead copy cannot be accessed with selection, left-click, or
right-click
operations - so the 'Properties' info cannot be displayed.

Left, right, up, down arrow keys cannot move an icon selection area to
this
dead icon.

A desktop refresh has no affect - a restart has no affect.

The C:\Users\frank\Desktop directory list does not show the dead folder.

Creating a new desktop folder with the same name 'powershell' does not
upset
vista. This can be done either on top of the dead folder or somewhere
else
on the desktop. Deleting the live 'powershell' has no affect on the dead
'powershell' folder.

It turns out that all 9 live icons were covering 9 dead icons. When a
selection area is drawn around the 9 icons, and the area with 9 icons
moved
up to the middle of the screen, the 9 dead icons remain. None of them can
be
accessed or deleted.

Any suggestions about getting rid of the dead icons?

Thanks in advance.

Hi--

I reread and some or all of your icons are what are called "system" icons.
In that case, they aren't going to be simply shift+deletable. To mod or get
rid of them, you might be able to use some of the delete undeletable file
free apps or even Doug's method, but often to change them **you need to go
to the registry**. You may have to google "delete system icons." The
hacks for deleting these icons definitely involve registry subkey mods.

In earlier versions of Windows like Win 9x, you removed icons like the ones
you had by removing registry subkeys from the key called NameSpace. It
often caused instability when some were removed like the one for Network
Neighborhood.

Go to regedit in the run box (windows key + r for red at the same time) or
just type regedit in the search box above windows start button . Thanks to
Jerry Honeycutt's book for this info:

These should be removable by editing HKLM or HKCU in the branch

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. What you do is to right
click that subkey, and click Add in the right click context menu, and choose
Add a RegDWORD value and type in the box the name for the value which is
HideMyComputerIcons. You also might try adding the value HideDesktopIcons
which has worked.

The specific name might have to be the class ID of the particular icon you
want to hide. You've already named them so for example it could be
HidePowershellIcons or HideRecycleBinIcons and yes the plural of icons gets
used for some reason although you can try singular.

This gets more complicated than I have room for, and I refer you to Jerry
Honeycut's fantastic Windows Registry Guide p. 88 and others (MSFT Press)
where I pulled this info. Jerry's instructions are really critical to
getting this done. I just wanted to give you an idea of what might be
involved. You really should read Jerry's book to appreciate the scope of
what is involved here, because I scratched the surface in the space/time I
had.

http://www.honeycutt.com/

http://www.honeycutt.com/About/tabid/75/Default.aspx

The reason I'm hemming and hawing on this is because you don't know and we
don't know the genesis of this curious phenomenon. I wish you tube had been
around when I had about 30 ifile icons on my desktop in ME and every time I
deleted all of them another layer smacked me in the face. It would have
made a great You Tube and I would also have emailed it to Redmond. To this
day, I'm not sure what it was but if it happened now I think I'd be better
at rooting out the cause--possibly some type of spyware/mild trojan hybrid.
It was so funny it was worth having the problem.

CH

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

*chuckles*

But a damn clever thought!

(I chuckled too, though.)

 

[+Bob+]

Please don't multipost; it makes more work for everyone and will get you
*less* help, not more.

Only from anal retentive net cops.

 

[franknark]

Hi--

I reread and some or all of your icons are what are called "system" icons.
In that case, they aren't going to be simply shift+deletable. To mod or get
rid of them, you might be able to use some of the delete undeletable file
free apps or even Doug's method, but often to change them **you need to go
to the registry**. You may have to google "delete system icons." The
hacks for deleting these icons definitely involve registry subkey mods.

In earlier versions of Windows like Win 9x, you removed icons like the ones
you had by removing registry subkeys from the key called NameSpace. It
often caused instability when some were removed like the one for Network
Neighborhood.

Go to regedit in the run box (windows key + r for red at the same time) or
just type regedit in the search box above windows start button . Thanks to
Jerry Honeycutt's book for this info:

These should be removable by editing HKLM or HKCU in the branch

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. What you do is to right
click that subkey, and click Add in the right click context menu, and choose
Add a RegDWORD value and type in the box the name for the value which is
HideMyComputerIcons. You also might try adding the value HideDesktopIcons
which has worked.

The specific name might have to be the class ID of the particular icon you
want to hide. You've already named them so for example it could be
HidePowershellIcons or HideRecycleBinIcons and yes the plural of icons gets
used for some reason although you can try singular.

This gets more complicated than I have room for, and I refer you to Jerry
Honeycut's fantastic Windows Registry Guide p. 88 and others (MSFT Press)
where I pulled this info. Jerry's instructions are really critical to
getting this done. I just wanted to give you an idea of what might be
involved. You really should read Jerry's book to appreciate the scope of
what is involved here, because I scratched the surface in the space/time I
had.

http://www.honeycutt.com/

http://www.honeycutt.com/About/tabid/75/Default.aspx

The reason I'm hemming and hawing on this is because you don't know and we
don't know the genesis of this curious phenomenon. I wish you tube had been
around when I had about 30 ifile icons on my desktop in ME and every time I
deleted all of them another layer smacked me in the face. It would have
made a great You Tube and I would also have emailed it to Redmond. To this
day, I'm not sure what it was but if it happened now I think I'd be better
at rooting out the cause--possibly some type of spyware/mild trojan hybrid.
It was so funny it was worth having the problem.

CH

 

[franknark]

Is your desktop wallpaper a screenshot of your desktop?

That's a good one - and that was the problem.

I had made a screenshot last month, and had saved it for emailing.

Later on I changed backgrounds, but then decided to go back the original.

Guess which one I picked?

Thanks for your help.


Here's what the desktop looks like.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~ftemplin1465/


And here's where the kaguya image came from.

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/kaguya/