losing my program icons since hard drive transfer???

aardvark · 11 May 2006 at 22:53

i seem to be losing my program icons since hard drive transfer (moving from an old boot drive to a new one)- the shortcuts are there (on the desktop and in the start menu) and they still work, but the icons are disappearing (bit by bit it seems over the last hour.
if i go into the shortcuts and click change icon i get an error saying something like 'windows cannot find the file %systemroot%\installer\{lots of numbers here}\the particular program file.exe'

anybody know whats going on?

cheers

earlyflash · 12 May 2006 at 15:18

I don't, but TweakUI has a rebuild icon function.

aardvark · 12 May 2006 at 15:23

ah good call - i forgot about that.

i'll try that when i get home.

earlyflash · 13 May 2006 at 08:22

Did it work for you?

aardvark · 13 May 2006 at 09:20

nope - it seemed to rebuild my desktop icons, but i had fixed those anyway by going to the individual program folders and creating new shortcuts.
the icons in the startmenu (and its not all of them, only about 20 or so) have stayed the same.

i think i will have to do them manually or reinstall the programs (some don't let me even change and search for the icon)

i do still have an image of my older hard drive - i'll see if i can find the directories that the icons are referring to.

thanks

aardvark · 13 May 2006 at 09:35

nope - trying the image file doesn't work either -i can't find the correct directories
i found one installer directory but copying that didn't solve anything.

anyone know what the %systemroot% refers to?

earlyflash · 13 May 2006 at 14:04

Yes %systemroot% is a variable which should point to your system drive.

Open up a CMD prompt and type:

echo %systemroot%

(I get

U:\>echo %systemroot%
C:\WINDOWS

Let us know what it says, sounds like it's gone wrong somewhere.

aardvark · 13 May 2006 at 15:43

i also get the windows directory

interestingly though, i've checked my backup image and i have an 'installer' directory in windows but not on the new drive - why it didn't copy over i'm not sure. - this would seem to match the error i mentioned in the first post.
is it safe to restore this directory? will it do anything else to the system?

cheers

earlyflash · 13 May 2006 at 17:52

I don't think that it's right that the exes icons are being picked up from the installer directory.

You can put it back, especially if you don't have the installer directory on the new image.

aardvark · 13 May 2006 at 18:10

ok, just done it - i did have an installer directory but it was hidden (i haven't got the system files visible in the options) but i restored the installer directory from my image and overwrote any files anyway, and it seems to have worked - most of my icons are back
a coule arn't but i think the pc just needs a restart (and i'm encoding some movies so i won't be doing that for a few hours)

thanks for your help

but, you say its odd that my icons (some of them anyway) are coming from the installer directory? i wonder why i would be any different. I also wonder why my hard drive copying program didn't copy over some of these files in the first place.
computers! - damn they are unpredictable.
anyway - it looks like its going to be ok now.
thanks again

edit: actually, i don't need to restart - the other icons have come back!