Windows 7 Favorites icon problem

[culthuu]

I know this is probably a trivial question in the great scheme of things but it’s driving me crazy. Is there anybody out there that knows how Windows 7 handles the ‘Favorites’ icons that are shown when you click the Favorites button on the Start Menu? I had Windows 7 installed on an SSD and have two regular hard drives as storage. The other day I decided to reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate 64 so I backed up all my data to one of the two storage drives including the ‘Favorites’ folder. I reinstalled windows and then copied the Favorites back from the storage drive. All the icons were there but then I screwed things up somehow. I used the Management Console to change the letters of my storage drives and to hide the small ‘System Reserved’ partition that was created when I installed Windows. Then I noticed all the icons in Favorites were gone, replaced by ugly Green blue globes. I’m guessing that somehow there was some connection between the icons and the original folder that was lost when the drive letters changed. I’ve done everything I know of to fix this but nothing helps. I removed the icon cache in users and deleted the icons in Favorites but nothing helps. I even started manually creating icons by visiting the websites and using ‘Add to Favorites’ but some worked and most went back to the globes. I went so far as to reinstall Windows and the icons were OK for a while until the first time I restarted and then they went back to the globes. I even tried copying the Favorites folder and the icon cache from one of my other machines that doesn’t have the problem. At first the icons were fine but then most of them reverted to the blue green globes. Even stranger is that all the icons are there if I go to the favorites tab in IE8. And stranger yet is that the icons I have in specific folders within the Favorites file are not effected.
I’ve scoured the Internet but can find no solutions except renaming the icon cache. I know this isn’t a big deal but those globes bug me and not knowing how to fix them is making me crazy. The people on this forum seem to know more than most so does anybody have any ideas I haven’t tried?

 

[Azhar]

if you pin an icon to the start menu, even though the ability to change icon is there in the shortcut properties, it will not work. In order to change the icon, put the shortcut into the All Programs menu, then change it from there, then right-click that shortcut and click "pin to start menu".