Windows 7: Overlay Icons on Thumbnails

Hi guys,

Not sure how long this has been happening but I noticed an occasional issue. Basically I have loads of videos on my laptop (mainly MP4) and WMP is the default player. When I browse the folders they all display a nice thumbnail with a little WMP icon overlay in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail. However sometime I see the little icon overlay changes to another random icon, the same random icon across all WMP files. So I lose the WMP icon (the actual thumbnail picture is correct still). If I double click the files WMP still launches to play the file so the actual program association is fine, it's just the icon. As far as I can see it's just the Windows Media Player icon overlay that does this. It's quite rare and intermittent but I have noticed it happen twice in recent weeks. A quick reboot and all is back to normal.

Sorry hard to explain but I hope I got the message across ok. Any advice would be gratefully received.

Cheers,
Wayne

you could try re assigning the file associations, select the default programs from the start menu and set wmp as the default

Try running through these tutorials.

Thumbnail Cache - Clear and Reset

Icon Cache - Rebuild

Thanks for the suggestions, but still have the issue with the icon in bottom right if the thumbnail. The thumbnail itself is always fine, it's just the icon! If I change view to small icons they all look ok but then I go back to large icons and the mini icons are still the problem. It's even doing it on word docs/excel/PDF files occasionally too. If I logout and login it fixes, and if I go to default program's and set the associated program for a vid file to media player again it also fixes everything. But the issue always comes back. I believe I know what is triggering it too. All remains fine until I go into my add / remove program's list (detail view). This obviously sets something off as then I will go into the videos or documents folder and see the thumbnail cover/display icon become random again. The random icons are always icons relating to other programs on my laptop. And the same random icon will be used for all file formats. For instance all video files will still display the thumbnail but in the bottom right the cover icon might be a control panel icon for all videos, whilst all word docs showing a thumbnail view might have another consistent although random icon. I do have a good 40 gigs worth of video and hundreds of photos but I can't say I really noticed this issue until recently. Although I don't go into add/remove programs list regulary. But now I know it's happening it's frustrating. Any ideas?

I have attached a Jpeg example, as you can see in the bottom right corner the icon relates to Google Earth icon, but these are video files and should have the orange media player mini icon.

Also to add if I double click any of these files the right program launches despite the random cover icon! I am baffled as I have cleared icon and thumbnail cache several times now. I could untick the view icon on thumbnails in view options but I like seeing these icons to differentiate - just finding it irritating.

Sorry for taking so long to get back. I'm out of ideas but I'll ask others to have a look.

Thank you very much Kado. I'm pretty baffled, it could just be a windows 7 bug that I haven't noticed before or maybe some kind of bug intro'd from win updates at some point. We have another Win 7 laptop at home and I can't seem to recreate the problem but then again this one has hardly any media on it!

Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore

Have a try?

have you tried setting the default program it opens with by right clicking on a movie thumbnail and selecting open with, then select choose default program, then choose the prog you want from the list, this may help re-assign the default associations

Here's a thought. What happens if you uninstall Google Earth?