Win XP Pro SP3 desktop icons being blanked and redrawn

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Win XP Pro SP3 and recent fixes

On my laptop (AMD processor, integrated graphics), and on a neighbour's
desktop machine too, I regularly see the icons on the desktop lose all their
colour then get redrawn one by one. It takes a few seconds and I have no
idea why it happens. My neighbour mentioned this to me recently (he says it
has always happened), and on my machine I've seen it on & off for years. Is
it just a windows "thing"?

It's as if the machine "hiccups" and loses track of what the desktop had on
it, but I can't relate it to anything in particular that I do. I'm not
adding or removing desktop icons, nor changing the desktop resolution, and
the desktop wallpaper itself is one of the Windows-supplied static ones (the
Autumn trees pic).

Nothing happens (according to the event logs) at the same time.

I've googled, and seen various problems with "remote desktop" which I'm not
using, and games (I have none). The machine is in any case behind both a
hardware firewall (on the incoming house broadband connection), and Zone
Alarm (on the machine itself).

Can anyone suggest what the cause might be?

 

[Andrew E.]

Try control panel,display,desktop,customize,web,locate & check the box
"lock desktop items" close out.Also,you might go to run,typeXDIAG
Run the Direct X tests for video.

 

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Try control panel,display,desktop,customize,web,locate & check the box
"lock desktop items" close out.Also,you might go to run,typeXDIAG
Run the Direct X tests for video.

Thanks; I'll try these... My first reaction was that I didn't have any web
content on the desktop, but actually that may be not so, because I do have
some shortcuts to start IE7 at specific websites. Would those count as web
content?

 

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Thanks; I'll try these...

As soon as I check the 'lock' box, legends under the icons on the desktop
change from being white letters with the background image visible around
them, and become black letters on a blocked-out white rectangle. It ruins
the wallpaper image as multiple areas are whitened-out.

In normal use, without the lock applied, when I select an icon the text
under it changes from white letters on a transparent background, to white
letters on a blue background. With the lock on, the white bacground areas
are in the same place as these occasional bluee ones, IYSWIM.

 

[pbarney]

It's probably your icon cache file

It's probably a corrupted icon cache file.

The file is %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\IconCache.db

That's going to be something like C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR LOGIN NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\IconCache.db

Delete it and reboot. The system will re-created the file and the problem should go away.

Hope this helps
Peter