A friend of mine brought over his aunt’s computer not too long ago (running Windows XP Professional). She was complaining about various virus-related problems and not being able to browse the internet because of popup windows. The first thing I noticed when I booted the computer was that her desktop icons were split in half and flipped. Strange, but not entirely unexpected on a computer heavily infected with malware. The icons kind of looked like this:
After I cleaned up her virus problem, I went ahead and looked for a quick fix for this problem. I was surprised at how quick the fix actually was! Microsoft has a tutorial on how to rebuild the icon cache, but as with most tutorials, there are lots of small steps. Basically, here’s what you need to do:
- Right-click on the desktop and choose “Properties.”
- Click on the “Settings” tab and find the “Color Quality” menu (see below).
- Choose the 16-bit setting and click “Apply.” (Accept any changes that may appear.)
- Change the color quality back to 32-bit and click “Apply” again. (Again, accept any changes that may appear.)
- Click “OK” to exit from the Display Settings and you should be done!
Those steps worked like a charm to restore the desktop icons back to normal on that particular computer. However, when dealing with any computer, your results may vary.
thanks works for me