My Desktop Shortcuts look Strange?[SOLVED]

Wallace · **Posted:** Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:15 pm **(#1)**

Has anyone ever seen this before?
Most of my desktop shortcuts have blank icon overlays.

I tried rebuilding the icon cache database,
but this seems to do nothing.
No system restore either.
Even if I change the icon,
it still has the blank icon overlay.

Also when I go to the shortcut properties.
The blank icon over lay is also present.

Anyone have any ideas about this?
:puzzled

rich2005 · **Joined:** Mar 04, 2011 **Posts:** 2614

Micro$oft is bizzare: A quick search and perhaps you are not alone.

this covers Win10 and down

http://superuser.com/questions/1052686/ ... -and-files

Maybe something in there that helps.

edit: that is about synced folders but but otherwise, what have you installed/done/let M$ do for you in the recent past to cause the change.

..and this ref. as well
https://www.tenforums.com/customization ... today.html

SeriousTom · **Posted:** Sat Jan 07, 2017 8:30 am **(#3)**

Nice wallpaper !
Temporary Fix - just hit F5 while viewing your desktop - this will cause a screen refresh and for me it removes all the shortcuts, and temporarily fixes the issue.

Wallace · **Posted:** Sat Jan 07, 2017 10:01 am **(#4)**

Thanks you guys.

Long story short...

I went fishing in the registry.
Figuring it had something to do with Explorer Shell Icons.

Found 2 String Value entries in this key,
that weren't there by default.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons

After a thorough search,
(which took quite some time) of my Windows Security Log.
I found that 2 values were recently created.

I don't know what created these values or why.
I didn't make any changes.
However,
I did clone one of my hard drives to a different location.
Perhaps this somehow created these string values?

I backed up my reg files and removed these entries.

All is now well in "Wally's World" again.