Hi All.

Looking for some advice about my computer. The desktop icons are hidden behind a windows symbol and the font colour in my programs list has changed to blue. The symbol is the windows logo with a white background and is sitting directly on top of the icons.

 

Any ideas?.

 

Cheers.

Any chance of a print screen, no sure exactly what you meen?

I'm guessing it's something like what is described in this article?

 

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/mysterious-case-of-icon-overlapping-in-vista/

if its windows xp you have could be active desktop is activated !

 

it basically lets you use a webpage as a background.

Any chance of a print screen, no sure exactly what you meen?

 

 

It's exactly as the thread below yours. Strange that!.

if its windows xp you have could be active desktop is activated !

 

it basically lets you use a webpage as a background.

 

No mate it's vista. I can see the original icons underneath these "windows icons and it seems to be working OK but it's a bit of a chew trying to look inder the obverlaying icon to see what I am doing.

 

Hope someone knows what it is?.

have you ever worked with the regedit tool ?

Any chance of a print screen, no sure exactly what you meen?

 

[jpg]http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/iconoverlapped.jpg[/jpg}

 

Just like this.

Bugger.

 

If the Icons that are covered are only Shortcuts and not system Icons (Recycle bin/Mycomputer etc.) there seems to be a fix on that thread that I posted... issue is that it's a registry hack... depends how confident you are with Computers if you want to do it or not...

whats happening is the transparent icon that has the small arrow in the corner is missing

or the link in the registry is wrong so rather than your icons showing the transparent bit

over your main icons you getting the missing-icon icon over the main icons.

 

you need to do a registry fix to erase the setting.

Ah thats a bit of a pain that one, try the reg fix from Stricker or reinstalling the programs will fix it.

try this to fix it - which clears the icon cache

 

1.) Open a command prompt - click start/run and type cmd followed by enter

2.) Close the explorer task in taskmanager - right click taskbar to get get task manager

then right click on explorer.exe task in the processes tab and select end process tree.

3.) click back on the black command prompt

4.) type this minus the quotes "cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local"

5.) Unhide the IconCache.db file with the following command "attrib -h IconCache.db"

6.) Delete the IconCache.db file by typing "del IconCache.db"

7.) Restart the pc

Edited September 13, 201015 yr by JaiKai
Missed a step

When you say open a command prompt is that from the "start -run" button?.

best way is to click on start then run

 

then type cmd followed by enter

Thought so. I'll try it later when I get home. Cheers Everyone.

hey there, have you tried running CCleaner? very good free prog

try this to fix it - which clears the icon cache

 

1.) Open a command prompt - click start/run and type cmd followed by enter

2.) Close the explorer task in taskmanager - right click taskbar to get get task manager

then right click on explorer.exe task in the processes tab and select end process tree.

3.) click back on the black command prompt

4.) type this minus the quotes "cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local"

5.) Unhide the IconCache.db file with the following command "attrib -h IconCache.db"

6.) Delete the IconCache.db file by typing "del IconCache.db"

7.) Restart the pc

 

HELP!

 

I shut down the command prompt mid way by mistake and all the icons disappeared with no way to get them back. Now it just says "no bootable partition in table" on a black screen. I sense a trip to the computer shop lol.

 

cheers.

did you have much on there you wanted to keep, documents etc? if not i could soon sort it for you :-)

HELP!

 

I shut down the command prompt mid way by mistake and all the icons disappeared with no way to get them back. Now it just says "no bootable partition in table" on a black screen. I sense a trip to the computer shop lol.

 

cheers.

 

not sure what it says no bootable partition in table unless you have deleted something your not ment too !

 

does it say that after a reboot ?

i would get hold of a linux boot disk, boot to that, backup all your data and then start fresh with a nice new copy of windows :-) let me know if you need any help :-)

i would get hold of a linux boot disk, boot to that, backup all your data and then start fresh with a nice new copy of windows :-) let me know if you need any help :-)

 

Not knowing how advanced the user is delving into the linux world might confuse them even more.

 

One can do all sorts of harm in linux - I would take it to a tech to be safe or other option is to pull

the hard drive and plug into another system to get the stuff off it.

i have a gr8 copy of a linux boot disk, which boots to a very similar looking system to windows. still got my computer etc. so al he would need to do would be to back up the stuff he needs then wipe. im in no way advanced with linux lol, as that the only use ive ever had for it, but its very very simple :-)

try this to fix it - which clears the icon cache

 

1.) Open a command prompt - click start/run and type cmd followed by enter

2.) Close the explorer task in taskmanager - right click taskbar to get get task manager

then right click on explorer.exe task in the processes tab and select end process tree.

3.) click back on the black command prompt

4.) type this minus the quotes "cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local"

5.) Unhide the IconCache.db file with the following command "attrib -h IconCache.db"

6.) Delete the IconCache.db file by typing "del IconCache.db"

7.) Restart the pc

 

Seems it didn't like getting booted up with a memory stick in. It's Ok now but the problem persists. Do I need to include the spacing and the use of lower and uppercase that you have used here?.

 

Cheers.