Icons gone, taskbar screwed, help!!!

[Eli]

Been awhile since this thing had a major problem... Guess I'm due... A few days ago all of my desktop and control panel icons suddenly turned black for no apparent reason. I tried the restore button in TweakUI with no luck. After playing with the shortcut settings in TweakUI a bit, they returned. Well, today I installed IE5 (I'm running W98, by the way), and all was well. Suddenly, a couple of hours later, all of my icons turned black again! Not only that, all of the icons on my taskbar are completely gone, as well as my other taskbar options, and I can't turn them back on. I tried playing with TweakUI again, but no luck. I don't want to have to restore a backup of the registry, because since I just installed IE5, things could get messy. Any ideas? Please help... Well, I'm off to the knowledge base... Thanks for any advise.

[RyanVM]

IE5 has a repair option in the help menu. From what I've read, it can do wonders for an ailing system. Try it out, it sounds like it certainly can't hurt!!!

Ryan VanderMeulen
rvand@sirus.com

[Eli]

Well, I'm pleased to report that the knowledge base actually came in handy. I deleted the shelliconcache file, rebooted, and my icons are back to normal. Unfortunately, my taskbar is still screwed up beyond belief. When I right click on it, and select toolbars, all of the options are greyed out. Any ideas? I never realized how much I used those handy little icons... Thanks alot for any help you can give.

By the way, I looked and couldn't find a repair option in IE5. Maybe it was just in the beta? Thanks for trying though.

[Eli]

Never mind, I found the problem. I had disabled IE4 in TweakUI while trying to fix my icons problem, which disabled my taskbar. All fixed up now. Would you beleive that the knowledge base actually came in handy TWICE?!?! When was the last time that happened? lol

[RyanVM]

Yup, it most certainly is gone! Must have been only in the beta. Glad you got it fixed!

Ryan VanderMeulen
rvand@sirus.com

[This message has been edited by RyanVM (edited 03-22-99).]

[BBA]

I know you didnt have to reload windows to figure this out, but, as a suggestion for future use that can save an hour or more of setup time:

Make a dir on your hard drive and copy/paste the whole windows directory to it, then rename the windows copy to something like 'winback' and cut and paste it to the c: drive root.

This is great for those strange situations where Windows gets screwed up, all you have to do is deltree the windows directory from a dos boot and then rename the backup to windows.

Its easier than any windows repair or backup, and you will have everything configured the way it was when you copy it!

[Eli]

BBA,
I used to do that, before I actually had a Windows CD. Two problems. One, on smaller hard drives, that can take up A LOT of real estate. And two, if you add and remove programs fairly often, you'd have to delete and recopy the backup just as often. That would quickly bacome a major annoyance, but I do agree that any backup is better than nothing. It's just not the most practical solution...