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Numerous shortcut icons are not being displayed properly for numerous applications (all MS Office shortcuts- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader, as well as Group Policy Management) on our SBS 2003 server.

Purging the icon cache did not resolve the issue. The issue affects any admin account that logs on to the server, so it is not a user-specific issue.

Here is an example of how shortcut icons appear:

enter image description here

We had trouble uninstalling Exchange 2003 a couple of months ago (got an error which prevented a component being fully uninstalled, so technically Exchange is still on the server according to Add/Remote programs). This problem was noticed shortly after the unsuccessful Exchange uninstall attempt.

Reinstalling affected applications has not helped to restore their icons. Two interesting things are happening here: one is that that any programs that were installed after the unsuccessful Exchange uninstall attempt have no problems with their icons. The other interesting thing, is that not only 3rd party applications are having this issue, but also the native Group Policy Management console shortcut icon as well. The AD Users and Computers shortcut icon in the Quick Launch bar is not affected, however.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

EEAA
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Austin ''Danger'' Powers
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    What is the exact error message you see when you attempt to login with the new account? What errors do you see in the event log when that new account attempts to authenticate? How are you trying to login (rdp, locally, something else)? – Zoredache Dec 06 '13 at 00:54
  • Fortunately, I was just forgetting to type the domain name when logging on. I never usually log on to the server with any other account, so didn't think to check the domain (blank by default). I have modified my question to show the only remaining issue- as the logon problem was a bit of a non-issue. The other problem is still quite a big mystery! – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Dec 06 '13 at 04:18
  • A +50 bounty and still no takers? – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Dec 16 '13 at 10:58

1 Answers1

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Here is something that might help, without knowing more about the problem or access to the machine, it would be difficult to figure out why it happened. But at least we can try to give you steps to resolve the issue, please let me know if this worked:

pipalia
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    Your first link led to a forum where this product was mentioned: http://www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager. It was only able to repair the *default* icons automatically (none of which had a problem on our server), it was the 3rd party application icons which where "blank". Fortunately, it *did* make it fairly easy to *manually* assign an icon (done by browsing to the application's EXE) to any given file extension. I was able to manually fix PPT. PPTX, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PDF. To fix my Quick Launch GPMC.MSC I just dragged a new shortcut from the EXE itself. Took me under 40 minutes. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Dec 18 '13 at 14:34
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    Glad to know that the problem has been resolved and thank you for accepting my answer and keeping me posted, by the way the second link looks interesting as well, should this ever happen again. – pipalia Dec 18 '13 at 14:57
  • The 2nd link (rebuilding the icon cache) didn't work for me. I was one of many people who could not be helped by that (much easier) procedure. In the forum referred to in the 1st link, many of the posters were unable to resolve this problem by rebuilding the icon cache, which was why they were still looking for a solution. Fortunately, it was *just about* possible to fix using Stardock's "Icon Packager" and a bit of patience/creativity! – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Dec 18 '13 at 18:01