Desktop Icons Covered with White Boxes or Black Squares

Here is a mysterious case of the icon overlap problem, which the screenshot below explains perfectly. You can see the original icon for shortcuts is overlapped by a generic white overlay (which is shown for unknown file types). An incorrect icon overlay setting is causing the problem.

shortcuts covered by white icon

As the issue is seen only for shortcuts (.lnk and .url files), the problem is with the “Shell Icons” registry key which you can use to hide or change the arrow icon for shortcuts.

For a proper way to remove or modify the shortcut arrow icon overlay, read the article How to Remove or Modify the Shortcut Overlay in Windows.

And here is a variation of the same issue, but this time the black square boxes are covering up the shortcut icons. This can happen if the blank icon within shell32.dll, 50 is used to remove the shortcut arrows.

shortcuts covered by white icon

Here is the particular registry key you want to check out.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons

In the subject computer, the value named 29 in the above registry location was pointing to the following .ico file:

%userprofile%\\Desktop\\WinBubble16\\WinBubble16\\icons\\noicon.ico

Presumably, a software called “WinBubble” was used to change the icons, and later the user removed the program — making the .ico file path invalid. The invalid reference causes the white icons (or black boxes) to show up as the shortcut overlay.

To remove the overriding registry value, start the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and go to the “Shell Icons” branch mentioned earlier.



shortcuts covered by white icon

Delete the value named 29 and restart Windows.

This should resolve the problem.

shortcuts covered by white icon

If the icons don’t refresh automatically, then refresh the icons manually. If that doesn’t do the trick, rebuild the icon cache.

See also: How to Fix Missing Shell Icons in Various Places in the Windows User Interface?


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

11 thoughts on “Desktop Icons Covered with White Boxes or Black Squares”

  1. I had a similar issue.

    Using regedit I changed the following:

    %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50

    to

    %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,50

    rebooted and the icons no longer have black squares covering them.

    Note that for Windows XP, I have %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50

    Reply
  2. Thanks for giving the exact regedit location for the fix. You are the first person I found online that actually had the solution to the missing shortcut arrows, instead of temporary fixes until the computer is restarted. This WinBubble software must have been included as bloatware in some other program I had uninstalled, because I never specifically ever installed or removed something called WinBubble.

    Reply

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