Shortcuts have Windows Photo Viewer icon

In the Metro screen, some shortcuts have an icon that looks like the Windows Photo Viewer icon. Some of these programs are: Macrium Reflect, Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center, TightVNC Viewer and Adobe Reader XI. See the screenshot below. How can I restore the icons, and prevent it from happening again?

Hello Megalos,

If you like, download and merge the .reg file for the listed lnk (LNK) option in the tutorial below. It will restore the default associations and registry entries for shortcuts, and hopefully fix this for you.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/8486-default-file-associations-restore-windows-8-a.html

In addition, you might also rebuild the icon cache.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

If that is truly the Metro Start Screen, I would check the "all apps" view and see how they look there. If OK on the all app view, then simply right-click and pin to start menu. Once done, you can delete (unpin) the unwanted app icons from the Metro Start Screen:





I have no idea what might have caused this so I cannot offer a long-term solution. Good luck to you!

Brink said:

Hello Megalos,

If you like, download and merge the .reg file for the listed lnk (LNK) option in the tutorial below. It will restore the default associations and registry entries for shortcuts, and hopefully fix this for you.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/8486-default-file-associations-restore-windows-8-a.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Click to expand...

Will this solution also fix the 3rd party apps as well?

Hello my2cents,

It's for all shortcut (LNK) files.

OK, thanks for that. Hopefully, the OP will respond with the testing results from both suggestions.

Thank you for all your suggestions. I tried to restore the default associations for the LNK files, and also rebuilt the icon cache as Brink suggested. Unfortunately, after a restart the icons are still the same. When I go to the 'All apps' screen, the icons for these programs are incorrect as well.

I found another program with the incorrect icon: Microsoft Lync 2010. One additional note: when I open one of these programs, the icon in the taskbar is also the incorrect one.

I wonder if Sandboxie has something to do with your issue?

www.sandboxie.com :: View topic - Taskbar Icons not showing 3.65.05

As a test I uninstalled Sandboxie and Macrium Relfect. I then re-installed Macrium Reflect. But unfortunately the icon is still missing. So it seems Sandboxie is not the problem here. One thing though: When I set the taskbar preferences to 'Combine when taskbar is full', the icon is displayed properly in the taskbar. See the images below:

'Always combine, hide labels':


'Combine when taskbar is full':


In the Metro screen however (and in the 'All apps' screen) the icons are still incorrect.

Thanks for testing. I'm not sure if this is relevant but could you try rebuilding the icon cache after uninstalling Sandboxie and Macrium? Then rebooting and trying the Macrium reinstall again?

I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately the icons are still wrong. I will have a look at another computer running Windows 8, to see if I get the same problems when installing software like Reflect or Adobe Reader.

Thanks again for testing. I can tell you first-hand that Macrium Reflect installs perfectly on Win 8 as I use it. One last test if you are willing to try it. Please go to the location of the Macrium Reflect executable, right-click to create a new desktop shortcut. Does that display correctly on the desktop? If so, try dragging it to your taskbar. Does that now display correctly?

I tried another Windows 8 64-bit PC and on that one everything looks just fine. On that PC, also Sandboxie was installed, so that software is not the problem I think.

I made a shortcut onto the desktop and it displayed the correct icon. Then I pinned the shortcut to the taskbar: again the correct shortcut. Also, when I run Reflect using the shortcut on the desktop, the icon in the taskbar is the correct one. However, when I launch Reflect using the original shortcut on the desktop (the one with the incorrect icon), the icon in the taskbar is still incorrect.

I know, I can copy the 'correct' shortcut to the following location: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Macrium\Reflect\Reflect.lnk , this will also fix the icon in the Metro screen. But I was wondering why this happened in the first place and how it should be avoided next times. If anyone has a clue why this happened, I would love to know. Anyway, thanks for your answers of course ;-).

OK, so now you have a manual fix for the selected bad icons. However, I have no idea how or why that happened. Good luck to you and I hope you can avoid a repeat of this issue going forward.

Usually those "Default" icons come from where the Installers are, in the "C:\Windows\Installer" folder. If you run certain "Cleaning" Programs, it deletes the entries from the Installer folder, and the icon reverts to a generic icon.

I'll have a look. CCleaner is the only software that I use for 'cleaning' my computer.

cCleaner would not do it. I use Yamicsoft Windows Managers for XP through 8, and there is a 1-click cleaner" program that will delete those Installers.

But what I noticed is that the broken icons seem to be related to Tile apps. I don't know if those get saved in the Installers folder. It appears that all of the Tile Apps get saved to the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps folder, there may be a folder for the installers in Appdata.