original icons disappear

When I set a shortcut on my desktop, the original icon will sometimes be
really fancy - cool colors & design, etc. After rebooting for another
session later on, these neat icons disappear and the blue square with
the E replaces it.

Is there any way to fix this? I thought I skimmed a post once that said
I could reset my icon cache to a higher value and that would take care
of it. TIA!
Linda


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On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 06:04:20 GMT, "bluemaxx"
wrote...
| Is there any way to fix this? I thought I skimmed a post once that said
| I could reset my icon cache to a higher value and that would take care
| of it.

You can fix this using the free ActivIcons utility from
http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_ai.html

1-- in ActivIcons, go to its "Desktop Controls" screen and increase
the icon cache size to at least 2048, and then

2-- rebuild the icon cache. The options for rebuilding the cache are
on 2 small round buttons at the lower/right corner. Shut down any
programs running in the background, then click the round button
farthest to the lower/right corner (your system will reboot, and the
icon cache will be cleaned out).

If you are experienced with Regedit and wish to accomplish the same
thing manually, you'll first have to run Regedit. Then navigate down
through the tree to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\explorer
Here, you will then need to create a new string value named "Max
Cached Icons" with the value data set to 2048 or 4096. Then save and
exit. Next, reboot into MSDOS, and delete the ShellIconcache file from
there (corrupted icons just get written back into the file if you
delete this manually while Windows is running). As always, be sure to
have a backup of your Registry settings before delving into this,
since you can mess up Windows if you accidentally delete or move
things. If you are not comfortable with the Registry, the ActivIcons
utility works very well.

However, this solution will not work for Internet "favorites" icons.
IE stores the icons in the Windows\Temporary Internet Files folders,
from whence they disappear once the cache size specified is reached.
To make them permanent, copy the icon to another folder outside T.I.F.
and right-click the favorites bookmark, select Properties, then Web
Documents, and use the Change Icon button to point the bookmark to the
icon in the new location (or point them to your own custom icons).




(don't live at a com or net - address listed is altered)