Desktop icons going walkabout

[Trent SC]

My father's mongrel PC with XP Pro (SP2) is behaving oddly, in that about ½
the desktop icons aren't showing up properly.

The icons for My Computer, IE, OE, Recycle Bin and the shortcut to his
documents folder are all ok, but shortcuts to Word, Excel, Britannica are
only displaying the little arrow in the lower left corner and the text, as
is a Word document that was saved directly to the desktop.

We've tried System Restore to no avail, and I'm rather scratching my head on
this one. It's a fairly recent clean installation of XP and he hasn't
installed anything apart from AVG updates since I set it up for him. All he
did yesterday afternoon was write one short letter and run a defrag.

Any suggestions on what I might suggest from a distance and over the phone
to a relative computer novice to fix this?

TIA

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD drive.
Then go to Start > Run and type: CMD , and hit enter.
In the Command Prompt window type: SFC /SCANNOW
and hit enter.

Description of Windows XP System File Checker
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310747/EN-US/

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.mspx

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| My father's mongrel PC with XP Pro (SP2) is behaving oddly, in that about ½
| the desktop icons aren't showing up properly.
|
| The icons for My Computer, IE, OE, Recycle Bin and the shortcut to his
| documents folder are all ok, but shortcuts to Word, Excel, Britannica are
| only displaying the little arrow in the lower left corner and the text, as
| is a Word document that was saved directly to the desktop.
|
| We've tried System Restore to no avail, and I'm rather scratching my head on
| this one. It's a fairly recent clean installation of XP and he hasn't
| installed anything apart from AVG updates since I set it up for him. All he
| did yesterday afternoon was write one short letter and run a defrag.
|
| Any suggestions on what I might suggest from a distance and over the phone
| to a relative computer novice to fix this?
|
| TIA

 

[Trent SC]

Hi Carey, and thanks for such a prompt response.

I hadn't considereed SFC, as I thought it compared the system files to their
original (i.e. installation) state, rather than actually checking that they
are simply 'good Microsoft' files. I would have expected it to kick back
most of SP2 if it had been installed separately to XP.

And of course the XP Pro CD is sitting on my shelf right next to me. Just
how intelligent was that!

 

[Trent©]

My father's mongrel PC with XP Pro (SP2) is behaving oddly, in that about ½
the desktop icons aren't showing up properly.

The icons for My Computer, IE, OE, Recycle Bin and the shortcut to his
documents folder are all ok, but shortcuts to Word, Excel, Britannica are
only displaying the little arrow in the lower left corner and the text, as
is a Word document that was saved directly to the desktop.

We've tried System Restore to no avail, and I'm rather scratching my head on
this one. It's a fairly recent clean installation of XP and he hasn't
installed anything apart from AVG updates since I set it up for him. All he
did yesterday afternoon was write one short letter and run a defrag.

Any suggestions on what I might suggest from a distance and over the phone
to a relative computer novice to fix this?

Double click on the icons and try to run them. Maybe the programs got
moved somehow...so that they won't run from the initial icons.

Other than that, you can right click on the icon, go to properties,
change icon, and find the good icon again.

If you decide to use SFC as someone suggested, make sure you run the
version that coincides with the service pack version you have
installed.

Good luck.


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!