Hi all. My Windows 10 Pro x64 computer [v. 10.0.19042, Build 19042] has developed an odd problem. The desktop icon for PDF files [a wallpaper image of the first page of the file], turns to black after a period of time.
If I right-click on the desktop, select "Display Settings", and change "Scale and Layout Size" to a different setting, such as 125%, the icon will then display properly for a short period of time, but will eventually revert to a black square. Resetting the scale again will always, but only temporarily, cure the issue.
I have the latest drivers for my GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card [NVIDIA Studio Driver v. 461.40]
I have the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader DC [v. 2020.013.20074], and "Enable PDF Thumbnail Preview in Windows Explorer" is enabled. It is also set as the default program for opening PDF files.
Also, I have deleted the icon cache several times using a batch file.
Does anyone have any ideas on what's happening?
Thanks.
:]
How to remove arrows from desktop icons in Windows 10 without getting black squares?
Part 1 - Remove arrows once [will break on reboot or re-login]
- Type regedit in the Windows search bar and select regedit at the top of the list.
- In the regedit program, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
- Right click on the Explorer folder, hover over New, then click Key. Name it Shell Icons and click enter or whatever to create it.
- Click the new Shell Icons folder. In the right pane, right click on the empty space, hover over New, and click String Value. Name it 29.
- Double click the String Value 29 you just created and give it the following value data: %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50
- May or may not have to reboot I forget. Check your desktop icons first to see.
Part 2 - Fix the black squares problem
When you reboot or login after Part 1, where the arrows once were there will now be black squares. To permanently fix the black squares problem, a short script will run automatically every time you login to fix the icons before you see them. Non-programmers can easily follow these simple steps.
- Open Notepad.
- Paste in the following and save it to the desktop as fixdesktopicons.bat [name not important, file extension .bat is important]. Basically it deletes the corrupted part of the icon data.
@ECHO OFF
ie4uinit.exe -show
DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db"
DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*"Click to expand...- Press Windows key + r
- Type shell:startup and press OK. This will open a folder where you can put scripts that you want to have run automatically whenever you login.
- Copy the script [.bat file] from your desktop and paste it into this folder you reached by doing shell:startup.
- Reboot the computer for changes to take effect.
Now whenever you login or reboot there will be nice icons with no arrows and no black squares either.