Shared Folder Icon Missing

[Wijono]

In one of my PC running Win98SE, suddenly I lost the shared folder icon, i.e., in the Windows Explorer the shared folder has the same icon as not shared folder. The shared folder used to have an icon with picture of hand under the folder icon, not anymore now.

Additional info: the ShellIconCache file is missing from %windir%, it seems Windows does not try to rebuild it.

Any suggestion to bring back the shared folder icon?

Thanks a lot!!

[eidenk]

the ShellIconCache file is missing from %windir%, it seems Windows does not try to rebuild it

If you shut down Windows normally you should have one again.

[kartel]

Try this

[Wijono]

I tried to run "Rebuild Icons" in Tweak UI to no avail, the file ShellIconCache is still not there.

The shared folders still have the normal (non-shared) folder icon, weird!!

Anything else that I can try??? Has it something to do with SHELL32.DLL?

[eidenk]

Have you shut down windows normally as I suggested you ?

The shelliconcache file is created if it does not exist (or updated if it does already exist) only during the normal shutdown procedure.

During startup, Windows loads the content of this file into memory.

The main benefit of this file is that it will speed up a little bit the boot process as the icons on your desktop and your taskbars (as well as others) will be cached in this file and windows will have to access only that single file one time during boot for displaying them all instead of having to parse the drives to extract those icons from several different files.

When you use TweakUI (or other similar utils) to rebuild the Iconcache, it happens only in the memory of the computer. It just makes the shelliconcache area of the memory empty.

[Wijono]

Thank you eidenk for trying to help.

To be frank I did not shutdown the PC, just Restart.

But just now I really shut it down, wait for 60 seconds and turned it back on.

The result is dissapointing, still no ShellIcoCache, and the shared folder icon is still missing.

Do you think those two events are interrelated?

I really do not hope to reinstall Windows to solve that problem.

Thanks a lot.

[eidenk]

Well I don't know if the issues are related. Anyway shelliconcache should be created during normal shutdown (unless I am doing a mistake saying that but I don't think so)

Get X-Setup Pro 6.6 (last free version). There is an option (in Appearance/Explorer/Settings) to enable/disable shared resources overlay.

There is another option (in Apperance/Interface/Icons) to set the size of the shelliconcache. Maybe yours is set to zero which would explain why the file is not created. They say you can set it up to 8000 (icons) but in my experience the max that can be obtained on a 9x system is 4092.

You said it happened suddenly but there is always a reason (installing new software, etc...) for such things to happen.

[MDGx]

This may help [that's where excerpt below comes from]:

http://www.mdgx.com/98-3.htm#TWK98

- In WinNT 4.0 some Desktop icons may become corrupted, reverting to generic

icons even if the user manually changes them back, and some insist on

displaying the shortcut overlay, even after disabling it by running TweakUI.

This BUG seems to affect ALL icon overlays, not only the shortcut one.

This is the Microsoft MSKB fix:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=199152

This can also be fixed by performing the following steps in this EXACT

sequence:

1. Delete the (possibly corrupted) ShellIconCache file from the Windows

folder.

2. Open TweakUI -> select the Repair tab -> activate "Repair Associations" and

then "Repair Icons".

3. Open Regedit and go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe

Make sure the "(Default)" String in the right hand pane displays "exefile".

Modify it correspondingly if different (don't type the quotes).

Then go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\DefaultIcon

Make sure the "(Default)" String in the right hand pane displays "%1".

Modify it correspondingly if different (don't type the quotes).

In case you decide to enable the Desktop icons "Shortcut overlay" in

TweakUI's Explorer tab, make sure to follow these steps:

1. Disable the "Show icons using all possible colors" option from Control

Panel -> Display -> Plus!/Effects tab -> uncheck the box.

2. Delete the ShellIconCache file from the Windows folder.

3. Restart Windows.

4. Reenable the "Show icons using all possible colors" option in the Display

applet.

5. Restart Windows one more time.

Says WinNT4, but works the same with all 9x OSes.

Hope this helps.

[kartel]

Try exit to dos and go scanreg /restore and find a date that it worked ?

[Wijono]

Thank you guys for trying to help!!

Let me tell you this story first, I found out the reason why the ShellIconCache was not rebuilt is that I did "Restart" and "Shutdown" through one-click shortcuts I made. In order for the ShellIconCache to be rebuilt, we must do the "Shutdown" from the Start Menu -> Shutdown ... -> Shutdown, after doing that indeed the ShellIconCache was rebuilt.

However, the shared folder icon is still missing, I tried Mdgx's suggestion, no luck. It seems that something else must have caused it. BTW, my attention was drawn by the fact that there is no shortcut arrow on the desktop icons. Try to fix it using Tweak UI by selecting "Arrow", also redo the KB313829 patch to renew SHELL32.DLL, still no positive result. Almost desperate I finally manage to get information from Mdgx's "Windows 98/98 SE Tricks + Secrets - Part 5" (Thanks Mdgx!!), and found that the default value for

"HKCR\CLSID\{63B51F81-C868-11D0-999C-00C04FD655E1}\InProcServer32" is empty!!

After entering "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SHELL32.DLL" into it and reboot, I got the shared folder icon back.