Windows 7 Windows 7 Network Icons

[The Lad]

Hey everybody,

I'm a newbie here and I apologize if this is something that's already been covered elsewhere, and/or I'm posting this in the wrong category.

I've been searching around for answers to this problem but I can't find anything that's similar to our particular situation.
Forgive me if this is a bit long-winded but let me give you an overview of our environment:

We're an international printing company with plants in various locations around the world. We have our own private WAN and of the hundreds of computers our IT team supports, about 40% of them are running on Windows 7 (we don't have an aggressive Windows 7 roll-out policy, but moving forward all PC's will be running Windows 7).
For this particular issue, we make use of DFS to replicate "global" file shares across the WAN. We have logon scripts in place (controlled by group policy) that automatically creates shortcuts to these specific share locations based on group membership. These scripts add shortcuts to the users desktop, and changes the shortcuts' icon to our own custom icons that are also stored in a DFS location.

Now, for reasons beyond my understanding, the majority of Windows 7 clients "lose" the custom icon and revert back to the "broken shortcut" (if that's what it's actually called ) icon. When you open the shortcut however, it works absolutely fine. When you select the shortcut's properties and select "Change Icon", the path is pointing to the correct DFS location where the .ico file is stored and the shortcut properties are even displaying the correct icon! But looking at the desktop, the icon appears to be "broken".

This issue is on appearing on Windows 7 machines, all XP client shortcuts/icons are behaving themselves wonderfully!

Can anybody please shed some light on this issue for me, it's really starting to get frustrating...

Thanks in advance!

 

[ChatGPT]

It looks like you are facing an issue with custom icons for shortcuts on Windows 7 machines in your international printing company environment. Here's some information and potential solutions that might help resolve this problem:

Understanding the Issue:​

• Icon Cache: Windows OS caches icons to improve performance. Sometimes, this cache can get corrupted, leading to incorrect or missing icons.
• File Path: Ensure that the DFS paths are accessible consistently from all machines where the issue occurs.
• Shortcut Properties: The properties might show the correct icon even when the desktop icon appears broken, indicating a possible caching or display issue.

Potential Solutions:​

1. Clear Icon Cache:
   • Clearing the icon cache may resolve the issue. You can do this by deleting the IconCache.db file.
2. Refresh Icon Cache:
   • Force Windows to refresh the icon cache by changing the icon size or color depth in the display settings.
3. Recreate the Shortcuts:
   • Deleting and recreating the shortcuts might re-establish the correct icon linkage.
4. Group Policy Update:
   • Ensure that your Group Policy settings related to icons and shortcuts are correctly configured.
5. Script Modification:
   • Check the logon scripts that create shortcuts. Ensure they are pointing to the correct DFS locations for icon retrieval.
6. Desktop.ini File Check:
   • Verify the presence of a desktop.ini file in the directory containing the custom icon.
     

     Steps to Follow:​

7. Icon Cache Clearing:
   • To clear the icon cache, you can follow these steps:
     • Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc).
     • Find "Windows Explorer" in the Processes tab, select it, and click "Restart."
     • Alternatively, restart the "Explorer.exe" process from the command prompt.
8. Script and Path Verification:
   • Double-check the script that creates shortcuts to ensure it is correctly referencing the DFS locations for icons.
9. Testing and Monitoring:
   • After making changes, monitor a few affected machines to see if the issue persists or is resolved. By following these steps and ensuring proper configuration of shortcuts and icons in your environment, you should be able to address the icon display issue on your Windows 7 machines. If the problem persists, further troubleshooting or hands-on investigation may be required. Let me know if you need more specific guidance on any of these steps!