I dont know what happended but i changed to view file known file extentions and all of a sudden there is a grey background behind all my icons on my desktop. please how to i get rid of this??! Also The side bar on the right of all windows in explorer has vanished. heeeeelpp pleaze

windows xp with sp2

www.tune-up.com Download the Tune-Up utilities 2006 trial. It has an icon rebuilder and some other icon tools that can help you.

have you tried tweak UI's "Rebuild Icons"?

This doesn't deal with rebuilding the icon cache...

Try this...

Right-click My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance->Settings

Make sure check marks are beside "Use Common Tasks in folders" and "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop". If they are already there, uncheck them, and then recheck them. Click OK to get out of all the Windows.

Any change?

@Zxian wow your AWSOME. that fixed everything right away. thanks a bunch for your reply.