Solved HELP! I've Got Double-Layer Desktop Icons!

Well, here’s one for the books!!! Shawn, I hope you’re there, cause I really need your help!

I downloaded a GAOTD icon program called Desktop Icon Toy, but it didn’t work well for me, so I uninstalled it (using Programs + Features). Afterward, I did a search to see if there were any additional files left over, and there was one, (the system tray icon) which I also deleted. The icons on my Desktop reverted back to the way I originally had them, and I thought all was fine, until. . . later this evening I turned my laptop off and rebooted. Everything seemed fine except for the Desktop icons. This was something I’ve never seen before – each of the original icons had a generic icon laid over the top of it – like two layers of icons, and you could see the original icon a little bit around the edges of the generic one.

I tried right-clicking on Properties to change the icons back to what they were, but no dice. Couldn’t change them at all.

Then I went to your Tutorial on deleting the icon cache, but it didn’t work. In fact, I did it twice and each time, the icon cache got larger! ( It went from 3,648kb, to 4,043kb, to 4,046kb.) I rebooted after each attempt and deleted the icon cache.db file from the Recycle Bin after each reboot.

The last thing I tried was changing the Display color setting from 32 to 16 and back again. I saw the icons move slightly as the changes were occurring, but the problem didn’t get fixed.

Now I’m really concerned. Have you ever heard of this happening Shawn?

PS I have Vista 64 bit on an HP Pavillion dv5t.

Hello Imperfect1,

It sounds like it may be your shortcut arrow overlay on the icons that is no longer displaying properly on your shortcut icons. You might see if restoring the default shortcut arrow icon may be able to fix these for you.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67615-shortcut-arrow.html

If not, then you can try a system restore using a restore point dated before you had this problem to hopefully fix it for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Can you post an image to show what you mean? What happens when you drag one of these icons - do all of the icons underneath move, or just the top one?

Small problem. . . I'm reading your Tutorial on restoring shortcut arrows Shawn, and if I'm reading it correctly, in the section on restoring shortcut arrows, it pre-supposes that at some point in the past, the reader has downloaded the ZIP file and manually deleted the shortcut arrows. In my case I haven't, therefore I don't already have that ZIP file on my system. Would it work if I go ahead and download the ZIP file as if I were going to delete the shortcut arrows -- and is the "Restore_Shortcut_Arrow.reg" file already in the ZIP files, without my having first deleted the shortcut arrows? (I hope that makes sense.)

And Dwarf, to answer your question, the two icon images, one directly over the other, move as one when you drag them. And seeing as there's no shortcut arrow on the icons anymore, I think Shawn is exactly right in what the problem is. [Would love to be able to post an image but unfortunately, I don't know how. I tried to upload an MS Word page with the print-screen image of the desktop, but the file was too big.]

If the shortcut arrow is the problem, then yes it should restore it for you no matter how you accidently removed them originally.

Shawn, you're a genius! I am so impressed. Yes, the shortcut arrows were the problem, and your Tutorial saved the day! Thank you so much! Reps to you, and you should be able to get a lot of reps for this one.

You're welcome Imperfect.

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.