Solved Desktop icons seem to have developed an unwelcome overlay

[Skibumtx]

My desktop icons seem to have acquired and overlay that wasn't there yesterday. The attached picture shows an overlay that occurs on every shortcut but not on the folders listed on my desktop. I have recently deleted a fair amount of "uneeded" programs so I suspect this may be related.

Any ideas on how I can get rid of the overlay?

Thanks,
Ski

 

[mickey megabyte]

it looks like your shortcut icon has gone awol, it happens sometimes.

try the tutorial below, and let us know if it worked.

How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows 7

 

[Brink]

Hello Ski,

It appears that your shortcut overlay icon has gotten messed up. You could use the program in OPTION TWO in the tutorial below to restore the default shortcut arrow.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3606-shortcut-arrow-change-remove-restore.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Skibumtx]

I tried both proposed options with NO JOY until I took a a closer look at the directions in the link supplied by BRINK. I found an error:

-------------------------------------------
B) Right click on the Blank.ico file and click on Properties. Under the General tab, click on the Unblock button if there. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: If the Unblock button is not there, then the file is already unblocked. Continue on to step D below.
------------------------------------

In my case the Blank.ICO file was already unblocked so I skipped to step D, but by skipping step C I did not copy the BLANK.ico file to the Windows directory.

Once I had moved blank.ico to C:/Windows the problem was resolved.

I don't know who maintains this tutorial but it might be worthwhile to eliminate the NOTE:

Thanks for the help,
Ski

 

[Brink]

Ski,

That option will not work for this unless you used OPTION ONE originally.

You would need to do the OPTION TWO section instead using the Vista Shortcut Overlay Manager program instead.

 

[Skibumtx]

Oh well, it seems to have worked.

I was a bit concerned that the procedure specifically called out Vista when i am using Win 7

Ski

 

[Brink]

Yeah, it was developed originally for Vista, but luckily it works just as well in Windows 7.

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted out.