I came across a mysterious case of the icon overlap problem in a Windows Vista computer. The screenshot below explains the problem. Upon closer observation, you could see the actual icon for shortcuts is being overlapped by a unknown icon. So I was sure that this is caused by an Icon Overlay override.
As this problem was seen only for shortcuts (.lnk and .url files), I suspected that the problem is with the Shell Icons key, where you can hide or change the arrow icon for shortcuts. (REF: How to remove or modify the Shortcut overlay in Windows Vista). I then asked for the export of this registry key:
As expected, the value named 29 did exist and was pointing to the following icon file:
After deleting the value named 29 and restarting Windows, the problem was resolved. Looks like the above referenced .ico file above does not play well with Windows Vista.
I came across this question in the AumHa forums run by Microsoft MVP James Eshelman, where I participate and also moderate posts occasionally. You can read the thread Desktop icons covered over where Microsoft MVP Bill Castner and I replied to.
Something I thought I’d share!
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Hello crosS
I also had the same problem on widows 7.
Look at this :
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-rebuild-the-icon-cache-in-windows-vista/
Despites the link name, it works well on 7.
hi, i got the same problem in windows 7.
but i cant find the shell Icons folder there.as well as the value named 29/
what i have in there is shell folders, shellIconOverlayIdentifiers,ShellExecuteHooks,and ShellserviceObjects.
the overlap icon made me sick. pls help
Hi,
Thank you very much for the icon overlap fix. I deleted the register key “29″ on my vista 64 machine and it fixed the overlap problem. I’ve spent hours and hours scouring google for this fix. Tried so many things that didn’t work. Thanks again. ~Rose