How-To Geek Forums / Windows Vista

(Solved) - Desktop icons change from original (real) icons to generic

Jan 17, 2019  Whether you want to revert to an app’s previous icon, or want to have some fun with customizing a variety of your apps, read on for how to change Mac app icons. Changing Mac app icons is a. Jul 27, 2014  Modifying Mac System Icons. Modifying system icons is generally not recommended, particularly for novice users. If you have any intention on changing a system icon or several of them, do back up the original.icns files first, and preferably, back up the entire Mac beforehand with Time Machine or your backup method of choice. This insures that you can revert things back to normal if you mess. Jul 16, 2014  Before you get into the steps of how to change a Mac app icon, you obviously need to have a new icon chosen and ready to use. MacOS uses.icns files for application icons, and it’s best to stick with this format if possible, as an.icns file contains multiple sizes of an icon for various uses.

I think this happens after restarting, but I'm not sure what program prompted me to restart. My Wells Fargo Bank icon is a Playboy Rabbit Head, the Amazon.com is generic, and the Playboy Cyber Club is the same as the Google icon, a big weird G. I just got the Geek Head yesterday, and today it is generic also.

Hi, Charlie, and welcome. Are you talking about desktop icons that are URL Shortcut files (.url)? Which browser are you using and how do you create the desktop shortcuts? In order to help you, I find that I am forced to navigate to the Playboy website in another tab. I see the rabbit head favicon and,...um, what were we discussing? I, um..., you should,..., um, I'm going to have to get back to you.

Hi Scott: Sorry about forcing you to check out my favorite website. I recently had a problem with HP, and let their technician take control of my computer. When we finished, the problem was solved, but the next morning I noticed that several of my desktop icons (.url shortcuts) had changed- some were now generic, and others had been swapped with each other: Amazon.com icon was generic, Playboy CyberClub was a Google weird G, etc. Yesterday I changed my default browser to Google, and reset my desktop appearance to Windows Vista Basic, and my screen resolution to 1600x1000, and I got the correct, original (real) Amazon.com icon back, and my Wells Fargo Bank changed from the Playboy Rabbit Head back to the correct one. All that's good, but I don't know what I did to change things, and I still have the Google G for my CygerClub icon. I usually Google a website, then create a desktop icon for it. Does any of this make sense to you? Thanks.

1. Jan 12, 2013  Step 3: In your Applications folder, find the app you want to change the icon of, right-click on it and choose the Show Package Contents option. Step 4: A series of folders will be revealed.
2. Mar 16, 2015  One of the best ways to customize your Mac and make it your own is to change your app and folder icons. With just a few simple changes, you can have things uniquely your own. There are a lot of different icons you can change in OS X. The easiest ones to change are your applications and folders but, we warn you, it can be habit forming.
3. Mar 09, 2018  Lately, I’ve been running across an oh-so-annoying issue: several of my Mac’s Dock icons are missing, with a generic application icon displayed instead. What happens is this: I click on an app to open it, and then its icon changes to the weird default one shown above.

Hi Charlie. I have an idea of what you are talking. Sometimes when icons or fonts mysteriously change, just switching to another theme and then back, solved it. We have had that here before. (my own system included)

Charlie, I know exactly what you are talking about. I just wanted to make sure that we are talking about the same thing. Also, I was curious to know which browser you use. With Internet Explorer, you can right-click in a page and select 'Create shortcut' and it will create an Internet Shortcut file on your desktop and use the the favicon from the website for the icon. I have seen this work on my desktop and I have seen the icons get messed up just as you describe. I think the problem is that the favicons from the websites live in some temporary place where they can be deleted or renamed.

If you have some URLs on your desktop that you plan to use often, and are willing to go through a little extra trouble, you can make the icons more permanent. First, you need to make a folder to hold your website icons. Then navigate to the page, make your desktop shortcut, then find the favicon in the browser's cache. In IE7, select Tools -> Internet Options -> Browsing History Settings button -> View Files button. Set the view to small/medium/large icons so you can see the one you are looking for. It may be that they are always called 'favicon.ico' with sequence numbers in square brackets []. Make a copy of the icon you are after in the folder you designated to hold your website icons. Rename the .ico file to something descriptive. Now, find the desktop shortcut, right-click and select Properties and on the Web Document tab, click the Change Icon button, then click the Browse button. Navigate to your website icons folder, find the one you want and choose it. Done.

This procedure will keep those icons in a permanent place instead of some cache folder somewhere. Once the icons are set this way, they should not get jumbled or reset to default. If they do, it will be easy to set them back.

Scott, I just changed themes - from Vista Basic to Windows Classic, then back to Vista Basic and - lo & behold, I got my Rabbit Head icon back, and all the other icons are correct. Now I'm going to do as you suggested, then I'm cutting my fingers off. Thanks for the help.

This is interesting. I knew that the theme change would restore the standard icons like Recycle bin (had to do that a couple of times myself), - but it is good to know that it will also take care of custom icons.

So, I had been thinking about where these little icons are stored when I remembered that Windows has an icon cache. Once that came back to me, it was easy to search up some answers. Here I found a KB article at Microsoft for what to do when your icons are messed up. What do you suppose the official, manufacturer-recommended procedure is? Change the video setting to something else, then back again!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/132668/en-us

Oh, the irony. It's like having an appliance repairman come to your house, and he slaps the side of the appliance to get it working again. :D

The other advice I found several times is to delete the IconCache.db file in AppDataLocal, which may require you to shutdown explorer. This will cause the icon cache to be rebuilt on the next system restart. This thread has a good write-up (and includes the official MS hand slap as option 2)
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117229-icon-cache-rebuild.html

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