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My earlier post Incorrect icon shown for a file type in Vista (March 31, 2008) tells you how to refresh the shell icons in Vista. In case the solution posted in that link does not help, you may want to clear the icon cache database. The icon cache can be cleared by deleting the hidden file named IconCache.db in the following location:
Note: %userprofile% represents the path to user profile folder.
Rebuilding the Icon Cache Database
1. Close all folder windows that are currently open.
2. Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence, or by running taskmgr.exe.
3. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.
4. Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.
5. From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run…)
6. Type CMD.EXE, and click OK
7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT
8. In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run…)
9. Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK.
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oh my gosh thank you so much. this works in windows 7 too!
Oh and Sean, that looks like Icon Badges, or overlays, like the shortcut arrow – dunno how they ended up like that, but it gives you another lead for searching.. :/
Excellent – I’ll make myself a nice batch file out of this. I had customized Firefox (including resource hacking the icon) and when I got tired of it and changed things back it wouldn’t update back to the original icon – heh.
Ramesh here is the link to the image i took of my issue. Thank you for trying to help me out. I’m lost here.
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w3/reaction_2007/Party%20on/desktop.jpg
Works for me, thanks man!
Worked great.
@Sean: Yours seems to be a different issue. Can you upload a screenshot?
This didn’t work for me.
I have red X’s on all of my drive letters (8) The only one left un touched is the C drive. All drives but one are networked and even the un networked drive has this huge X.
All drives work fine on the network and local.
Running windows 7 home premium.
This is driving me nuts because its ugly as hell and it just decided to change one day.