Customized Desktop Icons Resetting To Generic Icons After Use

MY CUSTOMIZED DESKTOP ICONS ARE RESETTING THEMSELVES TO BECOMING GENERIC ICONS AFTER USE

The icons I put on my Desktop keep resetting to generic icons every time I click on them to go to that particular website. I notice that this only happens to the web/internet icons though; the system icons don't seem to have this problem.

I enjoy changing my Desktop icons, and the way that I have been resetting them is by right-clicking on them, clicking on Properties, selecting “change icon” and selecting a different icon from the selection of assorted icons in the various dll files (e.g. Shell32.dll, imageres.dll, connect.dll, etc.)

However, once the new icons are on my Desktop, after I click on them, they reset to become a generic icon – the specific generic icon they turn into is always the same, it's the 1st one illustrated in the default icon location, Shell32.dll. (They don’t even revert back to becoming the original icon that I changed.)

I have an HP Pavillion dv5t, with Vista Home Premium edition on it (and am using IE 8 Beta). I keep my Zoom level at 125%, but I have not specifically increased the size of the icons.

Can anyone please help? I’d like to fix this problem, and I would also love the names of some great icon software for Vista.

 

could be a dumb question, but did you make sure that the save change or some similar to it has been clicked?

cheers ...

 

I wish there was a Save Change button to click on -- but there isn't. Once you click on Apply (which makes the change) there is nothing but OK to click on.

In XP you can repair icon corruption by deleting the Iconcache.db file, and it is automatically recreated on re-boot. But in Vista, although I have located the Iconcache.db file, when I attempt to open it, I get the dialog box warning me not to tamper with it or risk damaging the system. I don’t know if Vista works the same way, that if I delete it, the file will automatically be recreated on re-boot, or whether I really will damage something by deleting it. Can anyone help?

 

Well, the standard assumption for weird behavior of icons is a corrupt icon cache. Two ways to try and clear this out are

- Switch the color depth of your desktop from 32bit to 16bit and back, hitting "Apply" after each change.
- Delete the file C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\IconCache.db, and reboot. After the reboot, IconCache.db will be rebuilt, but the size of the icon cache file should now be smaller than what it was before. If it isn't, you may have to repeat this procedure. So, yes, you can delete IconCache.db on Vista; I just solved a similar issue on our home computer this way.

For web shortcuts, and if none of the above help, you may also have to clear out your Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer (by going to Tools->Internet Options->Delete...)

Good luck!

 

I am soooo disappointed!!! I thought for sure your suggestions would solve the problem, but amazingly, they didn't work. The bytes in my iconcache.db file did reduce from 6MB to 4.13MB, and I regularly clear out my temp internet files every week -- so I don't know what to do next. . .