Solved Strange Change in Folder and MSWord Icons in Windows 7

[galleherjazz]

A bizarre thing is happening to my icons, in particular my folder and my pdf and my Word and jpeg icons on both my Windows 7 C: and E: drives! I am attaching two screenshots of the square, a weird overlay on some and just subtitution on others. When I refresh the screen, everything appears as normal, then everything changes to these weird icons!

I would greatly appreciate some help as to what is going on. It doesn't seem to affect the programs or files directly.

 

[Megahertz07]

Lets do the basic:
Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
chkdsk c: /f
It will say your disk is in use and ask if you want to schedule to next start = yes
Restart
Pay attention on the results, specially bad blocks, bad clusters, bad sectors etc

Back to Windows, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
sfc /scannow
If it finds any corrupted file, restart and run it again.

 

[fromass]

Probably your icon cache is corrupted.
Reset or Delete the Icon Cache (Google how to).

Also Increase The Icon Cache Size while at it, so this won't happen again (optional).

You'll probably lose your icon arrangements and Windows will randomize them (on Desktop for example), so take a screenshot of them before resetting if you care.

There are also some Windows Tweaking software that can do this.
I think Winaero Tweaker is one of them...

 

[galleherjazz]

Thanks

Thank you. I will get back to you and tell you what happens.

- - - Updated - - -

Gentlemen:

I have done the suggestions from my two friends above to no avail. Deleting the icon cache and increasing the icon limit size and then rebooting made no difference, nor did the cmd scan come up with much of anything.

Is there something else I can do? Is there a registry fix? I hate the look of my folders with these weird overlays and substitutes, marring the icons.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have deleted the icon cache several times, booted, rebooted, and with the last reboot the desktop was clean for about ten minutes and then reverted to the corrupted icons and thumnails. But the mystery deepens! I noticed that the files in my documents folder had normal icons and thumbnails, so I refreshed the desktop screen and all the files reverted to normal look. then, again, I am noticing a slow corrupting look as slow many of the icons get corruped. What is going on?

I am posting a screenshot of my clean desktop upon reboot and one with partial corruption and one fully corrupted.

 

[galleherjazz]

Thanks for your suggestions. After pursuing many avenues, none of them were successful. An IT friend looked at my problem today and concluded that there were enough underlying issues with my system that I needed to upgrade to Windows 10 and quit futzing with 7! LOL. So, thanks for your leads and I will mark this thread closed.

 

[Megahertz07]

In my opinion, Win 7 is still a better OS than win 10.
Instead of downgrading to win 10, do a Repair install. It will reinstall Windows and keep your programs and data.

For the updates, use Single file with all updates - Simplix

 

[galleherjazz]

Thank you, Wish to be Flying! I will take your considered reply under consideration. Most kind of you to show me that page!

 

[Megahertz07]

As you have a OEM computer (HP) it came with a Win 7 SLP license.
I suggest you to backup the SLP license. If you decide to do a Repair install or a clean install you can use the backup SLP license to offline activate.
To backup the SLP license you can use DISM++ or ABR

ABR is very simple to use.