Some desktop icons are not as they should be

Hi Guys, while fixing my pc system (with your help) i've found, somewhere along the line some of my desktop icons are not as they should be. Is there a simple solution to this or is there something more sinister a foot?

 

Define what you mean by "not as they should be".
Are they:
missing?
in a different place on the desktop?
displaying a different icon?
or what?

 

Sorry guys. The original icons above their Titles have changed to a white box with a thin blue bar (3 grey dots within) with a curved arrow in the left bottom corner. This has happened to lightscribe, adobe reader, photoshop, fifa 08. My mp3 icon has changed to a box ontop of a paper, with red,blue and green shapes in the middle with a curved arrow again in the bottom left corner.

 

Yeah they're working fine, just wondered if there was a way of changing them back?

 

If you right click on the icon and choose "Properties" most will give you the option of changing the icon.
http://ioniafirst.com/icon.jpg

 

I tried what you've said. I get a message - windows can't find file %system root%/installer\blah blah\fifapc.exe, or for adobe reader same with reader.exe at end.

 

Do you see where it says "look for icons in this file"? click on the browse button and browse to the C:\Program Files\Adobe\adobe reader folder to find icons there. There will also be a little window at the bottom which allows you to choose what kind of icon to extract (icon files - programs - libraries - all files). Depending on which you select, those type of icons will be displayed. If there are no .ico files in the folder or directory try using programs to find their icons. Programs works most of the time when no actual icon files are present.

 

Thanks, that worked.

 

Now that you know how that works, you can make icons for the program folders in your start menu (usually there just a picture of a folder with a tiny window in front). So say in Start > All Programs > Adobe Reader (I'm sure yours will be different) just right click the adobe reader folder and do the same thing. Its really neat to have icons for all your programs in the start menu but if you have alot of stuff it can be time consuming.

By the way my Start Menu is split into specific folders I add in C > Documents and Settings > All Users > Start Menu > Programs

and I add these Folders:

Utilities (winrar, zip, ccleaner, tuneup utilites, etc)
Security(Zone Alarm, Avast AV, Spyware apps)
Games
Burn&Play(Nero, DvdShrink, Virtual Dub etc)
Internet(all browsers, flashget, outlook express)

This helps keep the lists from getting too long to fit on the screen and helps me organize my stuff. When installing if I have the custom option I point to the proper folder.

 

I forgot to mention that when you create those folders you can either move things around from the All User > Start Menu folders or you can drag and drop stuff where ever you want, from the actual start menu. Did you know you can drag a desktop short cut or Icon to the start button, the start menu will open, and you can continue to drag it to where ever you want. Thats great if you have a noinstall program like aida32, just right click its exe file and select "send to desktop create shortcut" and from there you can drag it to a folder you created for it in all users > start menu > programs > Utilities.