Today my son was playing a game on our PC and something happened
causing our system to shut down.

When he opened it again all of the icons on my desktop had lost their
individual looks ie the Word logo had gone and the excel logo had gone
and in their place all icons are a plain white square with a blue line
across the top.

What happened and how do I change it?

Poogie-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by rainbow-ga on 09 Apr 2005 03:48 PDT

Hi poogie,

Have you tried restoring the system? 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/systemrestore.mspx

Please let me know if that helps.

Best regards,
Rainbow

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Clarification of Question by poogie-ga on 09 Apr 2005 15:57 PDT

Yes I tried the restore systems option and that made no difference to
the look of the icons on desktop.

Poogie -ga

go to start run and type sfc -scannow
note that there is a space after sfc

It seems that file associations are somehow lost, usually this happens
when the registry is corrupted, computer has viruses, local profile is
corrupted, etc. If restore did not help and you are not familiar with
computers then the best way to fix this is ask somebody who knows
computer, since the procedure is somewhat cumbersome.

Hope this helps

Try to load on safemode. or,

Goto Start>Run>msconfig>Startup tab, and click on Disable All
now goto Services section, and tick Hide Microsoft Services
and now untick all those third party services.

Bala

also try cleaning your registry using registry mechanic or some other
registry cleaner. they will be available from www.download.com

vysakh007-ga

I did that and no change any suggestions?

Dear Bala

Did all of the below and still no change!  Followed the other advice
about Registry Keys being corrupted. Found quite a few things wrong
fixed them and still no change

Help

Poogie-ga

I would suggest reinstalling your graphics card drivers.

Reload windows, if you are not able to do this pay someone 50 bucks at
the local computer store to do it for you.

Whoa! Before reinstalling windows, a simple fix from Microsoft should help

Download Powertoys for Windows XP (link below) for a simple attempt to
fix your icons. After installing the software, open the program and in
the repair section press "Rebuild Icons" and it should work. If not, a
different procedure must be done.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Dear,  calbs-ga

Thank you Thank you Thank you,  your solution worked,,, It took some
time but finally our desk top looks normal again( Well as normal as a
desktop can look with  the screen saver my kids have installed!)

Poogie - ga