# ALL icons gone?



## cortlillard (May 28, 2007)

I have the strangest issue, and it makes using windows 8 pretty hard. ALL of the icons are missing, including in context menus, media previews (picture,video,etc....) , and in the metro interface.










I have looked for a few hours on the internet, and no one has seemed to have the same issue.

I did a system restore to a point they were working, and that did not help. I then deleted the icon cache to see if it would rebuild after i restarted my computer with no luck.

I intend to upgrade to the release preview when it comes out next week, but would like to overwrite my developer preview partition, and i use the consumer preview as my daily driver.

The strangest thing is that the icons show up when I upload or download a file in the sub-interface that pops up!

PLEASE give me some advice!!!!


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## peterh40 (Apr 15, 2007)

Could be a graphics driver issue. Also, try right clicking the desktop and select Refresh to see if they come back.


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## rkseid (May 27, 2012)

your words: deleted the icon cache to see if it would rebuild after i restarted my computer with no luck.


Try replacing the icon cache with an empty file. 
or find prefetch folder and delete the other copy of the icon cache

Win 8  blues


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## cortlillard (May 28, 2007)

FIrst of all, thanks for the response!!!!!!!!

I do not think It is a graphics driver issue. I have been running windows 8 Consumer preview since it cam out on this machine without a problem.

I do not the the issue is related to the icon cache unfortunately, because they load in certain circumstances. I think it rebuilt properly after i deleted it, but is another issue.

The problem started after i ran ccleaner. I suspect it deleted some file that windows 7 is able to rebuild, but windows 8 does not after it is deleted. I did, however, go with the default settings, and did not enable deleting any of the system used information, so i am not sure why this would be a problem!

Again, i would be ever so grateful if anyone is able to give me some advice!

Thanks!


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## DaveA (Nov 16, 1999)

> The problem started after i ran ccleaner


Most people around here recommend that one does NOT use ANY registry cleaner. I think you have just found out why.

Also, as a beta tester myself, I would NOT run any utilities on any Beta OS until the OEM of said utility said that it would work on the new OS. Then I would be very careful.


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## cortlillard (May 28, 2007)

I did not do a registry cleaning, just a disk drive cleaning! That is why I am so confused!


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I don't trust any file cleaner. My job would be a lot easier if people didn't run Ccleaner and delete the backups to important files and the BCD store. But as you may know, there are no cleaners designed for 8 since there is no 8 yet. Running programs on the wrong OS will lead to problems.

If you don't have any earlier restore points, and you can't undo any maintenance you did, you may need to reinstall to get them back.

And if your drive is so full that you will benefit from the few MB's that Ccleaner will get back for you, then you need a bigger drive.


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## cortlillard (May 28, 2007)

> you may need to reinstall to get them back.


I don't know if I understand. I am not concerned with any of the programs. I have no issue with reinstalling them.

I simply use ccleaner to speed up my system, in the work that i do, i seen to generate a lot of temporary files, and ccleaner has been able to get rid of up to 5 gigs of memory if i run it about every month. I am almost confident that running ccleaner was not the reason for the problem. I had not restarted my computer in about a week, so i believe it was something else.

I have reason to believe that the issue is now a file extension issue. In doing the cleaning, or something else, i may have set the file extension for icons to be opened with a program that is not compatible with explorer.exe (?). I don't think that this is possible, but i will need to do some research to see.

I thank you guys for the help!


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Ccleaner does not "speed up the system". The amount of data on the drive has nothing whatever to do with the system speed. Files are accessed directly, so it's not like the drive has to go through them all before arriving at the one it is after. So if that is the only reason you use a cleaner, you are not gaining one iota.

In fact, missing files (and registry entries) will slow down a machine when something keeps looking for the missing object, possibly 1000's of times every minute, when it has been deleted. So cleaners can slow down a system, but there is no way on Earth for them to speed a system up.


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## cortlillard (May 28, 2007)

I do not intend to be rude, I promise!  I certainly appreciate the fact that you are a power user of the site, but i don't believe that to be entirely true.

Most hard drives have a gradient of read/write speeds radially across a disk depending on the angular velocity (4800, 5400,7200 rpm's, etc), thus the drive is able to read/write to a disk faster in certain sectors than others. Most hard drives will put most accessed files in sectors that are able to be read fastest, however that is not always true, and defragmentation may move them to unfavorable (slower read time) sectors. Media or personal files that you store on your hard drive are indexed and stored in areas depending on the access frequency. To minimize any issues with hard drives, I tend to like to keep my disks with less than 50% capacity because of this. I do this by frequently using cleaning utilities, and as a broke college student, I like ccleaner because it is free!

I am just trying to get to the bottom of the problem, and do not want to cause any debate!  I just thought i would speak what i have learned!

Does anyone else have any ideas what may have caused my issue?


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## DaveA (Nov 16, 1999)

Bottom line, is that the used of the Ccleaner may have removed entries from the Registry and that is why you are having this problem. We can not be sure, but I would suggest that you rebuild the OS, you did burn a clean image, so you can start over.

Yes, your explanation may give you some increase in the reading of the drive, but NOT in the use of the processor or RAM.


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

Try SFC /SCANNOW.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

cortlillard said:


> I do not intend to be rude, I promise!  I certainly appreciate the fact that you are a power user of the site, but i don't believe that to be entirely true.
> 
> Most hard drives have a gradient of read/write speeds radially across a disk depending on the angular velocity (4800, 5400,7200 rpm's, etc), thus the drive is able to read/write to a disk faster in certain sectors than others. Most hard drives will put most accessed files in sectors that are able to be read fastest, however that is not always true, and defragmentation may move them to unfavorable (slower read time) sectors. Media or personal files that you store on your hard drive are indexed and stored in areas depending on the access frequency. To minimize any issues with hard drives, I tend to like to keep my disks with less than 50% capacity because of this. I do this by frequently using cleaning utilities, and as a broke college student, I like ccleaner because it is free!
> 
> ...


Most of what you say would have been relevant in the days of Windows 98, but I would challenge you to produce any evidence that on modern drives access speeds are at all affected by file numbers or space in use. In any case, most people have it backward about where files should be placed for fastest access (with angular velocity being of far less importance than data density). Many put Windows files on the outside track, reasoning that those files will be accessed the most often and benefit from the speed. But fact is that Windows area is accessed just once, to load the files and dll's to RAM, and then the rest of the time a program is executing other areas of the disk are being used. Dll's that are loaded for one app and reused for another, even further minimizing the time spent on the outside track. That's just one of many internet "memes" that have been going around for years that are just plain untrue. The fastest access times to a drive are not to the sectors as they are written in tracks on the drive, but along an arcing hypocycloid (one of Newton's brachistochrones - I will leave the proof as an exercise before the next class. HINT: Newton invented the Calculus of Variations simply to solve this problem, but since he didn't tell anyone about it, it took another 100 years for it to be "discovered" again.) that goes from the outside of the drive toward the interior, or _vice versa_. That means that fastest access is actually a state that most defragmenters would consider "highly fragmented" and advise you to remedy. Drive access times are not the time-limiting factor is most procedures, either.

I like your 50% capacity thing. I figure it's time for a new drive at 75%. It seems that a lot of people who come here for help like to wait until it's at 110%. 

In any case, if you have no problem reinstalling your programs, then just start from scratch with a new and undamaged Windows. Be careful of what tools you use, remembering that Windows already has all the tools you actually need to maintain the OS. And always have full system backups available (even one from right after installation that you can use as your "factory" restore, freeing up space on your drive if you can get rid of the recovery partition, and having a backup that will be useful when the drive fails. You could even save that one on DVD).

Free drive backup software (imaging, cloning, and archiving - backups can be created on a second hard drive, internal or external, or on DVD's, or BluRay disks. One BluRay disk will hold most peoples' entire system drive's backup at 25 GB's using compressed images, 50 GB's double-layer):

Paragon Backup & Recovery 2012 (Recovery boot CD or USB key)
Macrium Reflect (Free)
O&O Disk Image Express or (mirror)
Easeus Todo Backup
Acronis True Image For WD (reduced, free version for WD drives - cloning and imaging)
Acronis True Image For Seagate (DiscWizard) (reduced, free version for Seagate drives - cloning and imaging)
ODIN (open-source)
Redo Backup & Recovery (Boot CD)
Clonezilla Live (A bootable CD of Debian with Clonezilla.)
Drive Image XML
PING (Partimage is not Ghost) (Boot CD with option Clam Antivirus)
Partition Saving
Clonezilla
Passmark OSFClone (Bootable, cloning only)
ImageX and GImageX (Geekware. Small images due to "single instancing" and allows partial, selected restore of image parts. Used by Microsoft to apply disk image to drive during "installation" of Windows 7.)

There are also many commercial products with more features.


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