Main Progam Icons changed

[Fish-A-Holic]

OS - XP Home SP2 updated.

I've see weird stuff before but this is baffling.

My major programs such as all the stuff in Office
(Word, Excel, etc) plus my icons for Corel Draw
and a few others are now generic such as you
would get when you delete an executable file
but not it's icon (blue top - blank white page).

I don't know how it happened but what is strange is
none of my games, utilities, the stuff in Accessories
or anywhere else are affected. Just Office, all my
versions of Corel Draw, and most of the icons in my
Adobe (illustrator) folder.

Worse yet, when I right-click and bring up Properties
all I get are 2 tabs - General and Shortcut. No
Compatibility - as is usual. Plus the 'change icon'
and the 'find target' are grayed out. So manually
changing them back is impossible.

They all seem to work - launch the programs, that is.

Any thoughts as to restoration solutions?

 

[Claymore]

Hi,

Download and install TweakUI here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

You want the 147KB version on the right.

After installing, start the program and go to Repair => Rebuild Icons
=> Repair Now => OK

 

[Fish-A-Holic]

Used it already. Actually it is the first thing I did.

Nada. Nothing. No help at all.

I am open to more suggestions.

 

[Ayush]

Replied to [Fish-A-Holic]s message :

OS - XP Home SP2 updated.

I've see weird stuff before but this is baffling.

My major programs such as all the stuff in Office
(Word, Excel, etc) plus my icons for Corel Draw
and a few others are now generic such as you
would get when you delete an executable file
but not it's icon (blue top - blank white page).

I don't know how it happened but what is strange is
none of my games, utilities, the stuff in Accessories
or anywhere else are affected. Just Office, all my
versions of Corel Draw, and most of the icons in my
Adobe (illustrator) folder.

Worse yet, when I right-click and bring up Properties
all I get are 2 tabs - General and Shortcut. No
Compatibility - as is usual. Plus the 'change icon'
and the 'find target' are grayed out. So manually
changing them back is impossible.

They all seem to work - launch the programs, that is.

Any thoughts as to restoration solutions?

Check the actual/real exe files. Are they OK ? If not, then repair Office..
If yes, then post back

 

[Fish-A-Holic]

Replied to [Fish-A-Holic]s message :

OS - XP Home SP2 updated.

I've see weird stuff before but this is baffling.

My major programs such as all the stuff in Office
(Word, Excel, etc) plus my icons for Corel Draw
and a few others are now generic such as you
would get when you delete an executable file
but not it's icon (blue top - blank white page).

I don't know how it happened but what is strange is
none of my games, utilities, the stuff in Accessories
or anywhere else are affected. Just Office, all my
versions of Corel Draw, and most of the icons in my
Adobe (illustrator) folder.

Worse yet, when I right-click and bring up Properties
all I get are 2 tabs - General and Shortcut. No
Compatibility - as is usual. Plus the 'change icon'
and the 'find target' are grayed out. So manually
changing them back is impossible.

They all seem to work - launch the programs, that is.

Any thoughts as to restoration solutions?

Check the actual/real exe files. Are they OK ? If not, then repair Office..
If yes, then post back

As stated, the icons work just fine.

There is no "repair" that I could find for Office (ver. 2000).
Stuck the install CD in and it did its thing. I am sure now all the
Office updates I installed over the years have been overwritten.
And it still doesn't address my Corel files. I can't afford to
overwrite those. Too many tweaks to lose. Adobe is a
recent install w/no upgrades or patches as of yet. But there
has to be a better way. All I want is to find a way to ACTIVATE
the buttons that would allow me to manually do what needs to be
done.

As a side note, now that the 'real' icons are back, the two
buttons (find target and change icon) are still grayed out
and unusable when selecting "properties" for those icons.

 

[Claymore]

"As a side note, now that the 'real' icons are back, the two
buttons (find target and change icon) are still grayed out
and unusable when selecting "properties" for those icons."

This is by default for Office programs and for Adobe for the shortcuts
created by the install. The Target field is probably also greyed out.
If you want other icons, you have to create a separate shortcut from
the executable.

 

[Fish-A-Holic]

"As a side note, now that the 'real' icons are back, the two
buttons (find target and change icon) are still grayed out
and unusable when selecting "properties" for those icons."

This is by default for Office programs and for Adobe for the shortcuts
created by the install. The Target field is probably also greyed out.
If you want other icons, you have to create a separate shortcut from
the executable.

Thanks for the help.

I **THINK** I figured out the root problem.

I found one of the Adobe files where selecting properties would
let me change icons. When I tried, a message popped up stated
something about not finding %systemroot% blah blah installer
blah msi blah blah.

Well not that long ago I, like many other folks, tried to upgrade
Adobe Acrobat Reader to ver. 8. That wasn't successful as it
couldn't uninstall the previous version (a problem that affects many
users or so it seems). Doing it by hand and attempting a hand
cleaning of the registry was no joy. Next step, per Adobe advice,
was to use Windows Install Clean Up, which I did. Still no joy.
So, what the hey, dump a few more of those files - maybe I didn't
get the right one the first time. Guess I went overboard.

Bottom line, if that one Adobe file was looking for/into the Installer
that should have been on my HD, but which was gone, then perhaps
other programs do the same. Sounds logical but what do I know?

Thanks again.