A couple of rogue icons have installed themselves on my Vista Home Premium Desktop. Their other infuriating characteristics are: 1. They're absolutely impossible to delete, even via DOS (which simply hangs) - though they can be shifted around on the Desktop. 2. They have no 'properties' - right-clicking on them achieves nothing. 3. Windows Explorer 'sees' them in the Desktop directory, but programmes that I've downloaded for the purpose of removing 'difficult' icons, simply don't work: they just report that the icons 'don't seem to exist'. 4. The icons interfere with the proper functioning of Windows Explorer, which regularly 'greys out' and stops working. 5. They seem to have been generated by GroupWise: they have a GWI extension and they try to open GroupWise when I click on them. 6. Groupwise can't delete them either. 7. Seemingly these icons are looking for GroupWise messages that no longer exist - but this remains a Vista problem, not a GroupWise one. Suggestions for destroying them will be HUGELY appreciated!!! Kit
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Start Task Manager. Click Processes, choose explorer.exe, click End Process. Click File, New Task (Run...), type cmd and press Enter. Type cd C:\Users\%Username%\Desktop. Type del Filename.ext After you delete all the icons press File, New Task (Run...) again, type explorer.exe and press Enter.
Fantastic!! Thumper's recommendation worked easily, quickly, and on the first attempt! I'm mightily impressed. Many thanks, Thumper, for an elegant solution to a problem that had already defeated a number of computer professionals I'd spoken to. (In an earlier posting, Rennya had asked if the icons could be renamed. No, they could not.)
thanks Thumper - I registered at my digital life just to say thanks, so thanks. I have been trying to get rid of icons since last year. I googled - it all said wait for sp1. SP1 did nothing. But did enable me to email microsoft for free.... they have been trying for about the last 10 days. I have run clean boots, chkdsk, bitdefender scans etc etc til the cows came home and nothing. You plan worked a treat! Thanks heaps.... FYI to help others..... it did not work first go for me. I ran a dir listing and could see the files I wanted to del but when I used the file name.extension it just returned path not found. I then got smart and typed del *.gwi I had a groupwise message and a word doc that was dragged and dropped from groupwise email to desktop that I could not del. the *.gwi did the trick. I also had a few shortcuts to these two .gwi icons (from attempts to delete them). Once the main 2 were gone the shortcuts deleted fine by standard window press del and send to recycle bin. In the past when I pressed del I got "caluclating time to delete". It seems these icons also caused havoc with the images of my other desktop shortcuts. Some days they were there some days not, some days they were white paper. I only just got rid of them but hopefully now my desktop will stay 'normal" and explorer will stop crashing and restarting so often. I had these pesky icons for almost 8months and I thought I would have them for life! I did not want to create a new user as my files run from folders off the desktop...... Man I am so impressed and grateful..... I am not likely to forget how to do this but I am bookmarking this page for future reference Gold medal for Thumper!
Do a backup of important files and format your harddisk? The way I'd choose... It takes me about 1 hour to completely format and rebuild my system. Periodical backups make it possible Something not working properly? Backups made? Yes, check. Ok, format. One hour later: everything on the run again...
hey May i have a personal question? counld u sent me your email address?My email is heybabylover@gmail.com, thx, man.