Desktop Icon Changes Itself

[Guest]

For example: MSN Hotmail's icon is a "butterfly", in Favorites. It WAS a
butterfly, on the desktop shortcut. The desktop icon changed (on its' own)
to the lower case blue "e". The Favorites icon remains a butterfly. How can
I get the desktop icon to again show the butterfly?
Notes:
O/S = Windows XP Professional SP2
IE6 SP2
Issue occurs only on this PC - i.e. a second PC, on the home network
(WinXPHome), continues to show the butterfly on the desktop icon.
This issue is for all proprioritory URL's i.e. US Bank, Google, etc.)

 

[Guest]

you should be able to right click, properties, change icon, and navigate all
over your hard drive to set it to anything you like.

 

[Guest]

This is true. But, it doesn't help. I can not find the icons, e.g the
Google "G", that I lost. I rebooted the PC, as required for upgrades, and
the lost icons reappeared. However, your method would be more partical, if
the icons disappear again. It may be that I am not browsing correctly.
Thanks anyway. tede

 

[Jon Kennedy]

Those icons, called "favicons" are stored in your cache, or Temporary
Internet Files folder. When you clear that folder, or that icon gets
over-written due to age or file space requirements of the folder, the
favicon is lost. To make them permanent you'll have to find them in the TIF,
copy them to a separate folder and rename them.

The easiest way to keep your favicons permanent is to use a third-party
utility -

FavOrg http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,6679,00.asp

If you don't subscribe to PCMag's downloads, you can also get it here:
Version 1.4 here:

http://www.gratilog.net/anglais/internet/favorg.zip

or Version 1.2 here:

http://www.liemar.com.br/construindoseusite/downloads/favorg.zip

Great little program that not only saves your favicons, but checks your
Favorites for dead or redirected links, etc.

Or you can try these programs:

FavIconizer: http://www.codeproject.com/tools/faviconizer.asp
AM-Deadlink: http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm

More information on favicons:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/ie/favicon.htm
http://www.favicon.com/index.jsp?id=Internet+Explorer
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/howto/ShortcutIcon.asp