Solved Explorer constantly crashed now icons are incorrect

Ackis

New Member
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I wasn't sure what to name this thread because everything sounded so vague. But basically my icons are fubar! :'(

More detail:

Current Setup/programs that affected this issue:
RDP
Stardock Fences 2
Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition

Basically I RDPed into my home PC, tried to play some Street Fighter 4. Things worked, all was happy, and the Gods rejoiced. Until I returned home. Upon trying to log into my PC the desktop showed only partially complete (by this I mean the icons were there but they were in the process of moving to the "fence"). Explorer gave me the wonderful wait symbol and I could not interact with my PC. Fast forward 10-15 minutes, still no change. CTRL-ALT-DELETE worked kind of: it opened up after a few moments/minutes. From there I rebooted thinking that would fix it. Nope.

Eventually I got into the cycle where the desktop would load, fences would load, explorer would lock up, I'd click my mouse, explorer would crash and restart. I uninstalled fences, everything worked... except the icons. Reinstalled fences, same problem as before, crashing and whatnot. Uninstalled it again. And that's where I'm at currently.

DesktopIcons.pngUntitled.png

I've attached a couple images, the first one shows the current state of the icons. Some have their icons, some don't. All are valid shortcuts. I'm a bad person and I have actual programs on my desktop (by bad I mean I'm lazy) and even those have the generic white page icon.

The second screenshot shows the file in its directory, with properties and change icon. No matter how many times I do that, nothing will change.

I've spent a couple hours googling and my first thought was it was the icon cache so I decided to nuke it (I found some instructions on these sites with copy/paste commands, it was so easy even a cave man could do it).

So I'm currently frustrated beyond all belief at my PC on a night when I just wanted to come home, watch some movies and play a couple games after an annoying day at work. Instead I spent all evening trying to fix this problem and getting no where. Woe is me?

Anyways I'd appreciate any suggestions, pointers or tips (other than go office space on my computer).

Oh I should add without Fences (and I removed all my other customization stuff and nuked anything that integrated with the right click shell thingy which I can't remember what it's called) my machine is running nice and smoothly (so far) aside from the icons.

Thanks for reading.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Gateway
    CPU
    AMD K140 Cores 2 Threads 2 Name AMD K140 Package Socket FT1 BGA Technology 40nm
    Motherboard
    Manufacturer Gateway Model SX2110G (P0)
    Memory
    Type DDR3 Size 8192 MBytes DRAM Frequency 532.3 MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphics
    Sound Card
    AMD High Definition Audio Device Realtek High Definition Audio USB Audio Device
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Name 1950W on AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphics Current Resolution 1366x768 pixels Work Resolution 1366x76
    Screen Resolution
    Current Resolution 1366x768 pixels Work Resolution 1366x768 pixels
    Hard Drives
    AMD K140
    Cores 2
    Threads 2
    Name AMD K140
    Package Socket FT1 BGA
    Technology 40nm
    Specification AMD E1-1200 APU with Radeon HD Graphics
    Family F
    Extended Family 14
    Model 2
    Extended Model 2
    Stepping 0
    Revision ON-C0
    Instruction
    Browser
    Opera 24.0
    Antivirus
    Avast Internet Security
By nuked I meant removed anything related to it (e.g. send to XXX type stuff.).

That link to the icon cache is what I've done already.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
A refresh or restore would fix it.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Gateway
    CPU
    AMD K140 Cores 2 Threads 2 Name AMD K140 Package Socket FT1 BGA Technology 40nm
    Motherboard
    Manufacturer Gateway Model SX2110G (P0)
    Memory
    Type DDR3 Size 8192 MBytes DRAM Frequency 532.3 MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphics
    Sound Card
    AMD High Definition Audio Device Realtek High Definition Audio USB Audio Device
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Name 1950W on AMD Radeon HD 7310 Graphics Current Resolution 1366x768 pixels Work Resolution 1366x76
    Screen Resolution
    Current Resolution 1366x768 pixels Work Resolution 1366x768 pixels
    Hard Drives
    AMD K140
    Cores 2
    Threads 2
    Name AMD K140
    Package Socket FT1 BGA
    Technology 40nm
    Specification AMD E1-1200 APU with Radeon HD Graphics
    Family F
    Extended Family 14
    Model 2
    Extended Model 2
    Stepping 0
    Revision ON-C0
    Instruction
    Browser
    Opera 24.0
    Antivirus
    Avast Internet Security
I was able to find a solution.

I checked out
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\IconHandler
and it had a value of:
{611AD258-4138-4348-A534-9856FA6BA398}
I renamed the entry to IconHandlerX, rebooted and all the icons showed up again.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
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