windows xp icons messed up?

[sudoer541]

I am on my XP and all of my icons are messed up like when my recycle bin is empty it shows its full. looking at the icon of open office it changed into iTune's icons. why is it messed up?

[thatguruguy]

Have you run your anti-virus program?

[sudoer541]

I havent had any antivirus installed for a while since I am super careful.
But I had this problem for a while now. Yesterday I installed avira antivirus and my system was clean. I also installed ad-aware and my sys was clean.

[xpod]

I am on my XP and all of my icons are messed up like when my recycle bin is empty it shows its full. looking at the icon of open office it changed into iTune's icons. why is it messed up?

Looking at that OO icon again is`nt it more likely that the OO icon is in fact the OO icon rather than the Itunes icon and that the Itunes icon is not actually where you thought it was but instead the OO icon is now where you thought the Itunes icon was...:?

[sudoer541]

Looking at that OO icon again is`nt it more likely that the OO icon is in fact the OO icon rather than the Itunes icon and that the Itunes icon is not actually where you thought it was but instead the OO icon is now where you thought the Itunes icon was...:?


its not only OO and itunes but pretty much every program I got in there. everything is messed up. any way to fix it?

[xpod]

its not only OO and itunes but pretty much every program I got in there. everything is messed up. any way to fix it?

You say you`ve been "super careful" but you haven`t been running with an Admin account all that time you`ve been running without any AV have you?
That would probably be asking for trouble, regardless of how careful you think you`ve been.

When you say every program is messed up do you mean just the program shortcuts(icons) on your Desktop are messed up or do you mean the actual programs themselves are messed up/not working when your running them?

Messed up Desktop icons here usually means little sisters have been playing with her big sisters computers ;)

EDIT: You`d probably find more specific Windows help on a Windows forum of some sort. Dualbooting issues are obviously OT but specific Windows issues less so mabey.

[Post Monkeh]

the obvious thing i would do is install another icon theme then go back to my original one. i think xp has icon packs

[sudoer541]

the obvious thing i would do is install another icon theme then go back to my original one. i think xp has icon packs


no icon packs installed. Is there a button that repairs broken icons or something?

[Post Monkeh]

no icon packs installed. Is there a button that repairs broken icons or something?

i would try installing one though, then i'm sure you can download the default icon pack, or there'd be an option for it. could you post a screenshot so we could see what's wrong exactly?

[chriswyatt]

Reset your icon cache!

If you download Tweak UI it has an option to reset your icon cache, I think it might even be called 'repair broken icons' or something like that. I used to have this problem with Windows 98 quite often though I can't say I've ever had it with XP, but it's worth a try.

You would know if it's an icon cache issue if you right-click on a shortcut and the property dialogue shows a different icon (i.e. the correct icon).

[sudoer541]

Reset your icon cache!

If you download Tweak UI it has an option to reset your icon cache, I think it might even be called 'repair broken icons' or something like that. I used to have this problem with Windows 98 quite often though I can't say I've ever had it with XP, but it's worth a try.

You would know if it's an icon cache issue if you right-click on a shortcut and the property dialogue shows a different icon (i.e. the correct icon).


Thanks chriswyatt it worked!
I have one more problem. My recycle bin is full and when I try to empty it gets clean but I get a message that says "cannot remove file, please check path and file name."

[chriswyatt]

I think I might have had that issue before as well, I think I manually deleted C:\RECYCLED and that fixed it.

That folder is where all the Recycle Bin files are kept and I guess it also keeps a database so that it knows where to restore files, when they were deleted etc. If you delete it Windows will just generate another one.