Short of killing someone in Redmond...

Discussion in 'Windows 7' started by Phazor, Mar 12, 2010.

  1. Phazor

    Phazor MDL Expert

    Sep 1, 2009
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    Once again i cant help but wondering what kind of fools Microsoft employs.

    (And more than that, what kind of moronic ideas those people have.)


    Scenario:

    • You boot the computer

    • When the desktop appears a hard-refresh is done

    • All the icons of shortcuts leading to targets on volumes currently not attached revert to the default symbol


    Then:

    • You mount the volumes

    • You rightclick the desktop and select 'Refresh'

    • A soft-refresh is done

    • Nothing happens - The icons stay at the default symbol


    Only way to get back the correct icons for your shortcuts:

    • Run an application that is able to force a hard-refresh



    So here we have an operating system which does exactly and precisely the opposite of what it should be doing.

    When you log in, rather than leaving your icons alone, it happily hard-refreshes everything so that shortcuts to targets on not-yet-attached volumes are guaranteed to revert to the default symbol.

    Then, when the volumes containing the formerly not accessible executables are mounted, you click 'Refresh' and nothing happens. Now that Windows is supposed to reload the icons from the executables it merely does a soft-refresh and leaves your icons alone.


    Now i am usually very tolerant, but isnt that like...incredibly stupid? To implement functions that work exactly contrary to how they should be working? At any rate, i could fix it somehow on my old installation but for the life of me i cannot remember what i did back then. Maybe it was just something coincidental, i dont know.

    So does anyone have any idea how to make Windows stop doing that hard-refresh everytime i boot the darn computer? This is really driving me insane, because the way it is now i have to run a 3rd party program to rebuild the icon cache after every single reboot...


    PS: BTW this is not related to the thumbcache files in the AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer folder, and it is also not related to the IconCache.db in AppData\Local. I have tried everything humanly possible with these objects...what i need is something like a reg entry that prevents Windows from doing that startup hard-refresh in the 1st place...

    Thanks.
     
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  2. spacednow

    spacednow MDL Member

    Aug 26, 2009
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  3. Phazor

    Phazor MDL Expert

    Sep 1, 2009
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    I appreciate that you are trying to help, but it doesnt help me when you suggest things which i have already ruled out as the cause. :)
     
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  4. Rosco

    Rosco MDL Addicted

    Oct 29, 2007
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    I have a folder with all icons I use in My Pictures - I create the shortcuts I want but change the icons to the ones I want in a central location.

    Not sure if that will work when the object the shortcut points to isn't available but is easy and worth a try - not sure as I have no shortcuts on my desktop.

    Failing that get something like ObjectDock where the icons always stay the same even if the object no longer exists.
     
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  5. Phazor

    Phazor MDL Expert

    Sep 1, 2009
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    I suppose this would work but frankly i wouldnt want to have to do that.

    The problem is just this forced desktop-hard-refresh on each startup, so if that could just be suppressed somehow the whole thing would be solved once and for all...
     
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  6. RedSpider

    RedSpider MDL Junior Member

    Oct 13, 2009
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