.ink shortcuts are messed up

hi#

there is aproblem with my shortcuts on my desktop

i left my son on the pc when i came back on half my desk top icons had changed to adobe icons

when i clicked on say outlook it tried to open with adobe

the only short fix was to uninstall adobe then all my icons went back to normal

then i tried reinstalling adobe reader and most of the desktop icons changed back to adobe icons

im very confused as i really need adobe for work but cannot have installed on my system untill i get the .lnk set back to its original default, I THINK?

any help please

Hi Hazywazy, and welcome to Vista Forums.

See if clicking on lnk from the box at this site to download and use the lnkfix_Vista.zip file can fix them for you.

File association fixes for Windows Vista

Hope this helps,
Shawn

hi

tried this but still does not solve problem

when i reinstall adobe most of my desktop icons are adobe,. even most of my icons on the rest of my pc have now changed to adobe reader

this even includes program files like .exe files not just desktop icons so i think it may be more than just .lnk files

this is confusing as to why these icons have changed to adobe reader on all these differnt file icons

please help

Try to purge your icon cache.
If i remember to do so, open a command prompt as admin, open task manager and stop explorer.exe
In the cmd console go to:
%userprofile%\AppData\Local
Type in: attrib –h IconCache.db then Enter
Type in: del IconCache.db then Enter
Once file deleted, start explorer

hi

trying to type in command prompt but im not sure what u mean by %userprofile%\AppData\Local

on the command promt it says C:\users\'myprofile'\> (do i then type \AppData\Local ) im confused

i ve just opened it up as administrator and now have this prompt windows\system>

but when i try to specify path it wont let me, it just says internal external path not reconised

Enter this

hi

this still does not work

what is the % for either side of the user profile

the cmd panel looks like this C:\windows\system32>(i then input)username\appdata\local

but i get an error

Is it just the icons that are messed up, or are they also not opened by the correct program to?

If they open with the wrong program to, then try resetting the EXE file extensions back to their default settings as well. This link will show you how to.

Restore the .exe file association in Windows Vista, after incorrectly associating it with another application


If it is just the icons for particular file extensions, then Method One in this tutorial will help show you how to rebuild the icon cache.

Icon Cache - Rebuild

If it still does not help, then post a list of what file extensions are affected. I will post back the default reg. settings for them.

hi

it is the desktop icons that have changed to adobe reader e.g outlook icon changed etc and when i click to open it tries to open with adobe also program files e,g .exe files have all changed to adobe as well so it seems that when i install adobe it basiclly changed 70% of all my pc icons

hope this helps

I would recommend to first try resetting the EXE file associations then.

Restore the .exe file association in Windows Vista, after incorrectly associating it with another application