Vista theme ruined my icon

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by sohailakmal, Jun 15, 2006.

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  1. sohailakmal

    sohailakmal Registered Member

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    I recently installed a vista theme using the vista transformation pack 4. It wasnt anything impressive, but it did leave my C: Drive (Main Drive) iconless. I was just wondering if there is any way to retrieve the icon of the drive because its just a white piece of paper with a window drawn on it. Any help would be appreciated because im not good with icons.
    Thanks
     
  2. MojoWorkin

    MojoWorkin Registered Member

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    It's been a while since I had standard WinXP icons, so let me try to remember.
    I use Icon Packager, which has a Rebuild Icon Cache choice, so it's ez for me.
    I believe, you can right click an empty space on your Desktop,
    Choose: Properties, and click Desktop Tab, then click: Customize Desktop.
    There you have a button to Restore Default.
    If this doesn't work, post again, and we'll investigate further.
     
  3. Johnny123

    Johnny123 Registered Member

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    You could download TweakUI from Microsoft's site for XP PowerToys. This has an option to repair icons. If you want to try something before you do that, right click your desktop and choose Properties>Appearance and advanced. In the drop-down box select Icon, and then change the size of the icons. For example, if your icons are 32 pixel make them 30 pixel. Then of course click ok, apply, etc. This will cause Windows to rebuild the icon cache. If it works, you can then change them back to the original size.
     
  4. Uguel707

    Uguel707 Graphic Artist

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    To Retore the Theme

    If you are restoring to default Windows XP theme, you might try "Right-click desktop > Properties > Themes tab > select Windows XP in the Theme drop-down list > click "Apply".This will restore the theme to the control of the native "themes service" in Windows XP.
     

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  5. Uguel707

    Uguel707 Graphic Artist

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    Well,the second part of my reply is similar to MojoWorkin I only added screenshots to it.

    Restoring Icons

    1. Right-click on your desktop, Choose ''Properties'' and then Choose Desktop.
    A new window will open, click on ''Customize Desktop'' ...see next post after.

    ...customize desktop
     

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    Last edited: Jun 15, 2006
  6. Uguel707

    Uguel707 Graphic Artist

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    Once in the ''Desktop Item'' window, click on each icon separately
    and click on ''Restore Default'' for each of them. Once you're done. click ''ok''
    ...as you will notice, ''my computer'' icon is now restored to defeault! ;)
     

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  7. sohailakmal

    sohailakmal Registered Member

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    I tried the suggestion of restoring the default icons by clicking on the customize desktop button, but it restored the desktop icons for the usual set of my comp, my docs, etc., but nothing in the my computer area. Whats even more weird is when i dl programs that rebuild the icon cache and nothing happens. Is there a way to manually change the icon of the drive?

    Let me also specify, that when i said C: drive iconless, i meant that the image that usually shows up to display the C: from within My computer. All icons exist on my computer but the image for the actual drive. I hope that makes some sense.

    I keep editing this, but i found this:
    When i created a shortcut for the drive to see if the shortcut would display the drive image, i got an error message that says:
    Windows cannot find the file C:\WINDOWS\System32\VITrans\osdrive.ico
    I did a search for the folder VITrans and i came up with nothing. Interestingly enough, after i click ok on the error message, it takes me to the shell32 location and has the icon image for the drive, i just dont know how to apply it to he the main drive in the my computer area since there is no option for "change Icon."

    This is what it looks like,
    Any more suggestions?
     

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    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 16, 2006
  8. MojoWorkin

    MojoWorkin Registered Member

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    I forgot about TweakUI from MS...
    Here's a screenie, so I can submit like Uguel707 . . . (hehe)
    http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/drwngflies/TweakUI.jpg
    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
    It's about half-way down on the right. Give it a shot.
    Are the Icons just transparent? I mean, can you still click them? (on hard drives, etc. in My Computer)
    You can click the "hidden" icon, Choose Properties, Icon Tab, and select one that way, by the Change Icon button, if the "hidden" icon is there, but not visible.
     
  9. Johnny123

    Johnny123 Registered Member

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    If you have system restore activated try rolling back to a point before you installed this transformation pack.
     
  10. sohailakmal

    sohailakmal Registered Member

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    tried TweakUI and sys restore, but the same thing happens, i need that file that it specifies in the System32\VITrans\osdrive.ico
    When i refresh the my computer folder, i the icon flashes and disappears.
     
  11. Johnny123

    Johnny123 Registered Member

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    Here's someone with the same problem, it's the post at the very bottom of the page: http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8405

    That file obviously got deleted when you unistalled it but it didn't clean up the registry changes it made and now Windows is looking for a file that doesn't exist. Try out something like RegCleaner to get rid of this invalid registry change. You can google for "last freeware version" and get a free copy of RegCleaner. Another alternative would be to find an icon you like for your C drive, rename it to osdrive.ico and put it in the proper directory like you mentioned, with the correct name and path.
     
  12. sohailakmal

    sohailakmal Registered Member

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    Johnny123,
    You are brilliant. I used a lotta registry cleaner programs like, RegSeeker and CCleaner, but they didnt fix it. RegCleaner definately did the trick, it was the last obsolete entry i had. Thanks a lot, i really appreciate the help guys.
     
  13. Johnny123

    Johnny123 Registered Member

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    Great, glad it worked out :D I have used RegCleaner for a long time and I have never hosed anything with it, it does a good job.
     
  14. Uguel707

    Uguel707 Graphic Artist

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    Wow, glad you could fix that li'l problem sohailakmal,
    Good tip you had here Johnny123!
     
  15. Close_Hauled

    Close_Hauled Registered Member

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    I know that I am too late on this one, but whenever I have broken icons, I just delete the iconcache.db file. Windows will then re-build the icon database.

    It is a hidden file and can be found in:

    C:\Documents and Settings\<your userid>\Local Settings\Application Data
     
  16. Johnny123

    Johnny123 Registered Member

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    Yup, normally that would do the trick, or you can just change the pixel size which will also make Windows re-build the icon cache. That didn't seem to work in this case because of an invalid registry key pointing to an icon that wasn't there anymore after he uninstalled this transformation pack. Unfortunately some of the desktop eye candy stuff available on the net is quite buggy. :(
     
  17. tbearman

    tbearman Registered Member

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    Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\C

    Cheers.
     
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