Windows Program/Desktop Problem

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4 Jul 2006
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2,344
Heya guys I just got a call from a mate his computer is playing up but was working fine last night.

The problem he is having is that when he boots the computer up (He has tried 4 restarts with same result) all the icons on the desktop are displaying a picture that looks like a file that has not been associated with a program, its a white paper with a black square with the little squares inside.

None of the programs will launch from the shortcuts the only ones that will work are the My Computer and Internet Explorer links no other program seems to load.


Sorry I cant give more info but I tried a search on google for possible answers and couldnt find any and I am going round his house later and thought I would try to go round there with some idea if any of you have any.

He does have AVG and Ad-Aware installed on his machine and I will also personally run a scan when I go round but I thought I might be able to get some kind of idea of whats going on because as you all know its a pain to re-format a machine thats got a machine thats slower than a Athlon XP2400+.

He is using Windows XP with SP2

Thanks for reading.
 
sounds like his icon cache is corrupted. Delete C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\IconCache.db and reboot :)
 
Well that didnt work.

Got round there couldnt run anything when I started the computer it came up with a weird box with funny symbol in it and an ok button which had to be clicked before it would show a profile to log into.

Not even the exe files would run, said there was no association.

I finally managed to get them to run but as soon as system was restarted they wouldnt run anymore.

No virus's were detected and Adaware never picked up anything, was the strangest thing I ever saw.

Ended up doing a system restore to the weekend (This trouble only started today) and the same thing happened but the links did have pictures associated with them but when clicked they just went transparent like they were hidden files.

Ended up re-formatting.


Its a real head-scratcher that will no doubt **** me off til I forget about it lol.
 
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