html icons changed
In the past month I have noticed that all html files on my computer are now showing a blank white "paper" icon instead of the Firefox logo that it has shown forever. I finally decided to do something about it. I switched default browser to Chrome. Then I closed that. I noted that all html files now had the Chrome logo as the icon. Then I set Firefox as the default browser. And the icons went back to the white paper. I came here and followed the explanation to reset the iconcache.db but that also did not work. Is there anything else I can do, aside from uninstall and reinstall or reset? All that is too messy and I really don't care that much.
All Replies (5)
Did you try to change the icon via the right-click context menu?
Note that if you change the default browser then all file types (extensions) that are associated with the browser will change and you lose all custom icon settings.
Oh yes, I forgot to say, I did also try to right-click and change the icon, but these are files and that option is not available. I think that's only available for shortcuts. The only thing available in the right-click menu for files is to change what program opens it. I tried that, changing to Chrome and then back to Firefox, but still the same white paper icon.
I am most strongly interested in the solution to this problem, as it's been cheesing my "bundt" since a long-time-ago Firefox update, and frankly, I'm shocked more people aren't concerned with this problem. The simplest solution is to abandon Firefox altogether, but there are websites I can interact with only in this browser.
A heck of a lot more people have this problem than the five I see evidenced here, and this is NOT a new issue; it's a problem that's existed for many, many months, and my conservative "guesstimate" is that many millions of users are affected. Icon appearance isn't just an anal-retentive-control-freak (like me) thing; visual cues related to filetypes provide an invaluable tool in monitoring and assessing computer threat incursions...or points to programmer incompetence or laziness.
I tried searching for "reset icon cache" but this site's search function does not respond to Boolean parameters, so I got WAY, way too many results. I don't have time to scan and read 1259 articles, and Windows 7 Help is, of course, NO help at all.
Oh I actually found a solution last week:
1. I deleted registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML\ShellEx\IconHandler (I completely deleted the key, not just set it to no value).
2. I set registry key to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\FirefoxHTML\Def aultIcon to C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe,1
3. I changed the file association from Firefox to Internet Explorer and then from Internet Explorer back to Firefox.
Now all is functioning properly.
The usual warnings about messing with the Registry apply....
Okay, SaladGoat: That's PRECISELY the kind of thing I was looking for; I'm going to try it. Thanks in advance if it works for me, too (If I don't come back here, it means it worked).
Kinda related: I was getting really ticked off because my icons were showing their extensions even though they were recognized filetypes. I found the offendor in the registry: AlwaysShowExtension=true (I'm going to see if I can use that argument to always show the LOG extension of plain text documents).