Desktop icons have a strange overlay

[MSRadell]

For some reason most of my desktop icons now have a white rectangle covering most of them.  The only ones that don't are the base Microsoft ones of This Computer, Recycle Bin and folders.  I'm also seeing the same thing in the small icons within folders.  I'm attaching a screen clip to show what I'm talking about.  I tried using the Windows Repair tool from this website and running the Icon Repair but it didn't make any difference.  Any more ideas?

Actually doing a little more looking it appears that this only affects shortcuts.

[Boggin]

Have you tried your restore points back to when they were displaying correctly ?

[MSRadell]

Have you tried your restore points back to when they were displaying correctly ?

Yes, and that didn't change them.  Let me

[Boggin]

I don't know if this would work for you but right click on the Desktop and select Personalize/Change desktop icons then just check the box for User Files then Restore Defaults and see how that goes.

It's a puzzler that it just affects non-MS icons and rebuilding the icon cache didn't sort it.

MS has a Fixit to repair broken Shortcuts but is limited to certain versions of Windows, so don't know if it would apply to your version.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/system_maintenance_for_windows

This article gives other suggestions http://www.thewindowsclub.com/remove-broken-shortcuts-windows-freeware

[Shane]

I have been seeing posts all over the net of the icons getting messed up in 10 and no one can find a way to force windows to refresh them.

When I dug in and took a look at my 10 in vmware because the icnons where gone in the start menu I found that there is an entire change to how things are done. The start menu, isnt part of explorer, it is an app now. So are most of what you see. From what it looks like MS is moving every thing they can that way, which is going to be horrible.

Normally explorer shows the icons, so when they mess up we delete the icon cache forcing explorer to refresh them. That doesnt work with the new interface, I couldnt find the cache anywhere and nothing I did would force it to go check for the icons again. The only icons that did show are the ones for apps. Any none app program installed and the icon was just white.

Shane

[MSRadell]

I certainly appreciate the feedback and the work you spent looking into the situation.  It's just like Microsoft to go screwing with something that actually works instead of fixing things that don't!

[Shane]

I am still going to be looking into it and see what I can find. I did all the normal stuff of looking for registry changes, using process monitor to see all the files and registry keys hit, I found no errors anywhere. I found the dll used to make the start menu and tore into it and could a cleanup command and some others but no way to call them.

So I have a few more tricks up my sleeve to see what I can find. Right now I just want to find WHERE it is storing the cache for it. I am also curious if deleting the cache file or it got corrupted that it simply doesnt make a new one. Wouldn't surprise me, I remember when windows 8 would have all the app installs fail because a folder it needed was missing (Instead of just creating the folder lol)

Shane