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
worked for me too..