Rebuild Vista icon cache?

July 17, 2007 8:18 PM

Why is Vista showing the wrong icon for Windows Photo Gallery?

This is a question that really amounts to nothing more than cosmetics, but it's still nagging me, and so I am choosing to burn my question for the week by asking it. I had previously asked about changing the default program for video playback. That question was answered rather quickly, but it came with an unwanted side effect: the icon for Windows Photo Gallery in Vista's Set Default Programs screen has been replaced by a generic one, as can be seen in this image. The same icon is shown if I go to the Set Associations screen.

In XP, I'd just fire up TweakUI and rebuild the icon cache, which would fix problems like this. I don't know what would do that in Vista, though, and while it's not hurting any part of my system, it's bugging me, and if there's a way to fix this, I'd love to know what it is.

posted by phaded to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I think, from looking at my vista laptop, that the shortcut can point to an arbitrary Icon. That is to say, it's not system determined.

So, I just tried this and it seems to work : in the start menu, right click and goto properties - select the "shortcut" tab, and click the "change icon" button. That should point to:
%programFiles%\Windows Photo Gallery\WindowsPhotoGallery.exe

The default Icon is in there.

Hope this helps.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:55 AM on July 18, 2007

The problem is that it's not a shortcut that's got the wrong icon; it's the icon in the Default Programs screens, which, as far as I know, isn't something I can directly change.
posted by phaded at 3:31 PM on July 18, 2007

The problem is that it's not a shortcut that's got the wrong icon; it's the icon in the Default Programs screens, which, as far as I know, isn't something I can directly change.

heh, and I just looked at my default programs and it has the same icon as yours, so this is apparently normal.

However, in the start menu, it has the correct icon.

I'm afraid I don't have a good answer, unfortunately.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:47 AM on July 19, 2007