Installation messed up most of my icons

[mrmcgee]

Immediately after installing rainmeter using the enigma pack, many of my icons are displaying as if they are having errors.

http://i.imgur.com/YErtg.jpg

You can see, at least in the case of firefox and notepad, the real icons are blocked by the white paper. I've tried uninstalling rainmeter and restarting my computer but to no avail. I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I really need help solving this issue, even if it means I can't use rainmeter. As you can imagine, it is extremely annoying to have almost every icon replaced by a sheet of white paper.

[jsmorley]

Immediately after installing rainmeter using the enigma pack, many of my icons are displaying as if they are having errors.

http://i.imgur.com/YErtg.jpg

You can see, at least in the case of firefox and notepad, the real icons are blocked by the white paper. I've tried uninstalling rainmeter and restarting my computer but to no avail. I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I really need help solving this issue, even if it means I can't use rainmeter. As you can imagine, it is extremely annoying to have almost every icon replaced by a sheet of white paper.

There is no way on earth that Rainmeter has anything to do with this. The only thing that sounds even remotely possible is If you are running some desktop enhancement app (not Rainmeter, but something else) and the installation of the C++ runtimes has caused some conflict.

I would start by rebuilding your icon cache:

1) Delete the following file. Note, this file may be hidden, use Organize/Folder Options/View in any folder and set Show Hidden files to "checked".

C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\IconCache.db

2) Close down all explorer.exe processes using the Task Manager (Or else it will create a faulty file during logoff/restart)
3) Start Explorer again from Task Manger using the File/New Task menu and type "Explorer.exe" and hit enter.

This should cause Windows to rebuild the cache for all icons and hopefully will set you right. You might want to reboot as well to be sure all is ok.

[mrmcgee]

Well, you were right. It wasn't rainmeter causing the problem....sorry about that. It was an unfortunate coincidence. I think the root of the problem was the iconpackager I had downloaded. After uninstalling it, deleting the iconcache file, and restarting explorer via the task manager, this is what I've ended up with.

http://i.imgur.com/Bbqx0.jpg

The white sheets in my task bar are now shields, and on the desktop are now setup icons. Is there a nuclear option here to reset everything?

[jsmorley]

Well, you were right. It wasn't rainmeter causing the problem....sorry about that. It was an unfortunate coincidence. I think the root of the problem was the iconpackager I had downloaded. After uninstalling it, deleting the iconcache file, and restarting explorer via the task manager, this is what I've ended up with.

http://i.imgur.com/Bbqx0.jpg

The white sheets in my task bar are now shields, and on the desktop are now setup icons. Is there a nuclear option here to reset everything?

Delete the icon cache file again, then reboot. Sometimes it takes a time or two.

Another option is to re-install the iconpacker package, and look through it to see if has a "restore to normal" ability. If it does, then once you get things back to normal you can uninstall it.

The nuclear option is to use System Restore and restore your system back to a point before the installation of the iconpackager thing.

[mrmcgee]

*Whew* well I think it's all fixed. I used a combination of what you told me, and some changing of registry files (icon shell or something like that). Thanks for your help! It's nice to know it wasn't rainmeter causing the problem :thumbsu:

[jsmorley]

Glad it's sorted out...