Lost Icons

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Hi,
I have a strange fault on my Laptop and wonder if anyone can help solve the problem….
I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1 and all updates.

I normally just put my Laptop to ‘Sleep’ but yesterday, I closed it down. When I turned it on this morning,
many of my Desktop Icons have disappeared. All the affected Icons have the small Image missing, but the Text is still visible.
The Icons in question are all External Shortcuts (Internet Links) all other shortcuts to internal programs are OK.

If I Right click on a blank area on the desktop and select ‘Refresh’, the missing Icons momentarily appear and after about half a second disappear again.

I’ve done quite a bit of research on the Internet and found several similar references and suggested solutions, but none have worked so far.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions

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I’ve done quite a bit of research on the Internet and found several similar references and suggested solutions, but none have worked so far.

What [exactly] have you tried previously?

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Try this code pasted into Notepad, then saved on your desktop as a .bat file:

Code:

@echo off
cls
echo The Explorer process must be killed to delete the Icon DB. 
echo Please SAVE ALL OPEN WORK before continuing
pause
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F 
echo Attempting to delete Icon DB…
If exist %userprofile%AppDataLocalIconCache.db goto delID
echo Previous Icon DB not found…trying to build a new one
goto :main

:delID
cd /d %userprofile%AppDataLocal
del IconCache.db /a
pause
echo Icon DB has been successfully deleted
goto main

:main
echo Windows 7 must be restarted to rebuild the Icon DB. 
echo Restart now? (Y/N):
set /p choice=
If %choice% == y goto end
echo Restart aborted…please close this window 
explorer.exe

:end
shutdown /r /t 0
exit

I save it as RebuildIconCache.bat

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Yeah, that batchfile has been a staple in my kit since the days of XP.
I don’t know if it’ll work in 8 or 8.1 as I have not had to use it in many years.
Anybody…

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Now that you mention it, I believe early on someone used it in Win 8 and it did work, but I cannot swear to this.

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Thank you very much for your responses

The Batch file did the trick Medico!! You’re a STAR!!

As suggested by CLiNT, I’ve added the batch file to my ‘Utilities’ Folder…….

During my search on the Internet for solutions to the problem, I found many reports of the fault, so it seems to be quite common

I carried out several Malware scans, Virus Scans (AVG) and SFC /scannow – no problems reported by either process.

Some of the suggested ‘cures’ which I tried earlier were :

1. Right click the desktop > Select View and then Show desktop icons.

2. Right click desktop > personalization > change desktop icons > restore default > ok

3. Start button > Control Panel > System and Security > Find and fix problems > Change settings > Set Computer Maintenance to Off.

4. If you create desktop shortcuts to removable storage places such as NAS the icons will disappear from time to time because Windows 7 has a built in task schedule to clean up broken and unused links. To prevent the task from running you need to disable the task in the task schedular: start-programs-accessories-system tools-task scheduler. Expand the tree in the left hand pane until you get to Task Scheduler Library-Microsoft-Windows-Diagnosis.
In the right hand pane, right click the task named Scheduled and click Disable.

5. Tried turning off Desktop Cleanup

None of the above cured the problem……

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Geez, a Star, now my head might swell! LOL. Glad I could help with your problem.

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