black icons fixed. Thanks all.

Hm, don't know what kind of machine you're on, but twice when I've had that sort of trouble it was caused by a display driver gone over to the evil side. In each case, reinstalling the same driver didn't help but installing the very latest did. Never was quite sure why it was like that but there it is.

One other time a similar thing occurred but vanished after a reboot. Never returned. Corrupt RAM or some other one-shot oddity I guess. Hope it's something simple like that. :-)

Meffy

MY computer does this also! And I'm running a NVidia GeForce something or other, and the newest drivers didn't help...

if anyone has a clue, the little yellow folder boxes to the left of the folders in explorer/my computer are now black, or if I drag an icon shortcut from my desktop to the task bar the icon becomes totally black so you can't tell what it is.

This is usually a problem with the ShellIconCache -- at least, I've seen this before and there may be different solutions depending on the version of Windows. The following appears to remedy the situation in the past:

• Open Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, then click the Display icon.
  
• Select the Appearance tab.
  
• Select the icon in the Item Box.
  
• Increase the icon unit by 1.
  
• Select Apply.
  
• Decrease the icon unit by 1.
  
• Select OK.
  
• Delete the file %systemroot%\ShellIconCache
  (Note: This file has a hidden attribute, so you may need to display hidden files in order to see it).
  
• Log off and log back on to see the correct icons.
  

There are discussions on this on the net, so do a google and you're bound to find others with the same predicament. Many of the solutions look very similar to the above, so try that first.

Good luck, and please report back if this helps at all...or not, as the case may be!

Hi Michael,

I had responded to a post like this back on June 11. Here is what I had to say about it then and now:

If you have problems with icons in general on your desktop then try deleting the hidden file C:\Windows\ShellIconCache then reboot (it will be recreated and repopulated automatically by Windows). This is a cache of all the icons encountered by the Windows explorer user-interface shell.

-Techead

sounds great, but how do I do it? Delete a hidden file?

Thanks

Under Windows XP, there's no such file (shelliconcache). There was one in Win98 but I doubt there's one in Win2k too...

Michael:

Open Start Menu, Settings, Control Panel, then click the Display icon.

Select the Appearance tab.

Select the icon in the Item Box.

Under the appearance tab (lower left) is a box labled "Item". Select the down arrow and then highlight the word "icon". Then follow VariousArtists previous instructions.

HTH

Paul

Sorry Michael, I fed you a slightly inacurrate piece of information. You do have an icon cache like I stated before, but it has been renamed and relocated under Windows XP (as opposed to earlier versions of Windows). This file is a "database" of the icons that Windows has opened from various files throughout your system. This gives Windows a quick way to refer to icons without having to open every file on the system every time it needs to display them. Instead, it just goes to this cache. But sometimes the cache file can get corrupted (TweakUI from Microsoft has been known to cause this for some people).

Try this better and updated info:

1. Go to "Start | All Programs | Accessories | Windows Explorer".

2. In Windows Explorer pull down the "Tools" dropdown menu and select "Folder Options". This will open the "Folder Options" dialog box.

3. Select the "View" tab.

4. Scroll through the "Advanced Settings" scroll box and locate the item called "Show Hidden Files and Folders" and mark it active.

5. Scroll through the "Advanced Settings" scroll box again and locate the item called "Hide Extensions for Known Filetypes" and mark it active.

6. Click "OK" to close the "Folder Options" dialog box. This will return you to your Windows Explorer application.

7. In the left pane of Windows Explorer open the "My Computer" sub-tree and drill down through this directory structure (substitute whatever is appropriate on your system where mine indicates "bob" below):

c:\documents and settings\bob\local settings\application data\

8. Within the folder described in step 7 you should find the file called "IconCache.db". You can rename or delete this file. Windows will recreate it when you reboot.

9. Reboot.

Many times if this file is recreated it will get rid of the blackened icons. This has worked for me a few times.

Under the appearance tab (lower left) is a box labled "Item". Select the down arrow and then highlight the word "icon". Then follow VariousArtists previous instructions.

HTH

never found the shelliconcache (maybe because I deleted it earlier under WINNT, but toggling the number up one and down worked. Andy Zee if you are tuning in you should try this-it worked. Thanks so much all of you VA.Paul,Tec, etc.

Much oblige.

yeh, I deleted shellconcache a little while ago and nothing happened, and that probably explained why I couldn't find it because it was gone. Anyway, what finally fixed it was the toggle idea that Various artist gave, coupled with the fact I guess that you had already told me to delete that file. Sorry I took so much of your time, but it's weird looking at black boxes where names are supposed to be-downright spooky!!!


CHeers

I do greatly appreciate the help.

Michael

This is windows icons.. Those are fine.. Its the Sonar black box icons when you insert a synth.. anyway to fix this so oit shows the proper plugin.  thx