Fix Corrupted Desktop Icons

[Rbreb13]

Fix Corrupted Desktop Icons

To speed up performance, Windows XP caches the icons for all of the items on your desktop. That way it doesn't have to look inside each file every time you boot. But the icon cache can become corrupted, or it may simply be too small.

If your desktop items display the wrong icons or no icons at all, enlarging and refreshing the icon cache should help. The easiest way is to download Microsoft's free (but unsupported) TweakUI PowerToy; there is a tool specifically for repairing desktop icons.

To do this manually, go to Start | Run and enter Regedit to launch the Registry Editor. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. In the right-hand pane, find or create the DWORD value MaxCachedIcons.To enlarge the cache size, double-click on this value and change it to 4096 in decimal. If the problem recurs, try an even larger value.

Next, you must force Win XP to reread all the cached icons. Right-click on the desktop, choose Properties, click on the Appearance tab in the dialog box that pops up, and click on the Advanced button on that tab. Select Icon in the Item list and increase the Size setting by 1 pixel (this will normally be from 32 to 33). Click on OK to dismiss the Advanced Appearance dialog, then click on the Apply button. The desktop will fade and then return back to normal. Now click on the Advanced button again, change the icon size back to what it was, click on OK, and click on OK again.