Vista x64 Icons are White

Hi, i just installed object desktop on my Vista X64 machine for Desk Scape. Since theres no custom install it installed all software and when it did all my icons turned 'White' or default. This has mainly happened to installed programs, the icons work fine just the mini-images are gone. It happened the last time i installed it also, i've upgraded my Mainboard and CPU today and reinstalled Vista. The icons were fine untill i reinstalled Object Desktop. I'm guessing it has something to do with Icon Packager since that program won't launch and it seems as though it corrupted the icons. I uninstalled it and windows blinds and desktop X but the problem persists. Has anyone else experianced this or have any tips?

Cheers

95,452 views 28 replies
Reply #1 Top
Same problem. Vista X64, blank icons, and Icon Packager will not launch. I haven't had time to look into a fix since I'm moving on Friday.

Anyway, you aren't the only one.
Reply #2 Top
Good to know im not the only one. Hopefully someone from Stardock gives us an update. I bought only Object Desktop for Desk Scape since they don't offer it stand-alone. Not offering a custom install in this day an age is just plain stupid, especially given the fact the forum is littered with people having problems with a specific piece of software.
Reply #3 Top
You are not the only one!
I Paid and installed Objectdesktop, and by the time it finished installing my Icons were gone! Stardock advice was to uninstall and re-install. Did a vista uninstall and it left dir's and sub dir's and reg. entries behind. I was finally able to restore most of my icons. Then I decided to quit while I was a head. Was able to get a full refund, but it will be the Last product I ever buy from Stardock!
Reply #4 Top
but it will be the Last product I ever buy from Stardock!
HaywoodU - I believe you have made your point in several postings that you have had issues with your icons after installing ObjectDesktop. You have received support from members and Stardock support to try and resolve this problem.
Then I decided to quit while I was a head

That is your choice but this could have been resolved if you would have taken the time and followed suggestions as indicated in your previous posts. I'm sorry that you decided to quit as you are missing out on some great desktop customization.
Reply #5 Top
HaywoodU - I believe you have made your point in several postings that you have had issues with your icons after installing ObjectDesktop. You have received support from members and Stardock support to try and resolve this problem.


Hankers, Not sure that I have made my point!
1) I do thank everyone on here who tried to help!
2) I decided to quit because, Stardock was not giving me the "warm & fuzzies" that they knew what was going on with the Missing Icon's!
3) Numerous Stardock "solutions" failed and I did not want to be Stardocks "test-bed", and risk doing more damage to my PC.
4) While Stardock did respond in a somewhat timely fashion, the person who was working on the ticket did not appear to be very experienced Which only added to my apprehension of continuing with this debacle. Yrag, I thought, had better solutions.
5) Another one of Stardocks tech. support people kept emailing me saying they were closing the ticket because it was resolved, while it was clear in my emails and phone conversations with support the PROBLEM was NOT solved.
6) When I tried to get a refund, the sales type of person was, rude, and downright nasty (and I was my usual sweet, lovable self, not a way to win over customers).

I agree that I will be missing out on some "great desktop customization", but at what cost?
I wish this forum & Stardock continued success.

Reply #6 Top
6) When I tried to get a refund, the sales type of person was, rude, and downright nasty (and I was my usual sweet, lovable self, not a way to win over customers).


If explaining our refund process to you is what you would consider to be rude, then our entire sales and support team have been rude to a lot of people! We have a process that we follow for all refunds, which I explained to you. Angie explained it to you as well when you called her to tattle on me. Guess what, I'm still here. Stardock is great because our managers back up their employees.

As for being sweet and lovable, you interrupted both Angie and I numerous times during our phone conversations, especially when we said something that you did not want to hear. Your definitions of sweet and lovable are very interesting.

This is a good time to explain why you could be considered a difficult customer. First, you are posting to this forum under a different email address from which you placed our order. How are we supposed to help you if you do not provide the information necessary to look up your order and eSupport tickets? (Merging your accounts now.) Second, you spammed our support and sales email addresses with multiple tickets. I remember merging at least 5 tickets into one to cut down the clutter. By emailing us multiple times, your ticket was actually bumped down the queue, because it showed activity. Third, you called and left voicemail only to call again. What was the point of leaving voicemail if you were going to call again anyway? Last, and this is the best, you attempted to email all of our managers. It was a good try, but we do not use the firstname.lastname @ stardock.com convention for our email addresses.

You are the type of customer that we do not want. In the end, you got all of your money back, so that's the end of that!
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Reply #8 Top
well, i guess she told him! touche, MeliBee!
Reply #9 Top
Well, I just purchased the Ultimate package (and found that the main reason for purchase was actually free anyway), however upon installing I found the same problem as HaywoodU. I also run Vista x64 (business ed). I proceeded to update all apps through Impulse, and found no difference. I then attempted to reset icons manually, but again, no joy. The changes would not stick (clicking on apply made no difference, and the setting I just set would disappear). Most annoying.

So after having a read and a search of other people having the issue with no joy to resolution, I did what I though was best and uninstalled all I could of the Object Package through the Impulse program. Rebooted, removed the Object DEsktop Launcher via Programs and Features (Control Panel), and then Impulse. After that it was into System Restore to restore to a point this morning prior to installing the Object Package. Reboot (at this point everything has come back nicely), go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock, right click, shift delete, yes, ok, bam all gone. Reboot again.

Wonder about a refund request, read EULA, decide that lawyers need to review all EULA's as they are all care no responsibility, and that wont stand up in court. Even though the software is "AS IS" in the agreement, the software is developed and sold to the end user for a purpose (as per the advertised information on the website), and if it is not fit for that purpose due to defect or misrepresentation, then that is called FRAUD. It's been argued in court before, and funnily enough the defendant lost.

But, this story does have a happy ending.

Even though I loathed the idea of spending another hour trying to work it out, I went back to my email, and downloaded the Impulse installer (full copy) from link provided, once that was installed, I then installed all the apps, one by one, that were installed by the full Object Package I had previously tried. Lo and behold, no icons got clobbered, and no shennanigans occurred.

So, this reset to default icon thing, in my case was caused by using the full Object Package installer (all 260MB). It would appear that something in it does something odd to Vista x64, that the Impulse installer does not, perhaps it is one of the older versions of applications that it installs, whereas the Impulse installer installs the latest version.

Ill let someone else figure that out.

Hopefully this will help someone else experiencing the same issue.
Reply #10 Top
Ugh, I don't know how many times i've said this but there is a bug in Impulse if you uninstall IP it will muck up your icons and they'll become blank. What you need to do is install Stardock Central and install IconPackager through that. Once you have done this, reboot. Then open up Stardock Central again and uninstall IconPackager and reboot once more. After that your icons should be restored to the way they had been prior to using IconPackager.

If you still have IconPackager install and want it uninstalled without any icon issues, MAKE SURE THE DEFAULT ICONS ARE APPLIED, THEN uninstall through Stardock Central, reboot and all should be fine.

I've had the blank icon issue countless times and what I've posted above resolved the issue each time.
Reply #11 Top
If you read the intial reported problem and the description above you would see that the problem was experienced by installing the Object Desktop full installer, and not by uninstalling IP.
So it would appear to be a different problem to what your steps resolve.
Reply #12 Top

I purchased a renewal package of Object Desktop yesterday, with hopes that I could customize the already old and played out look of Vista.  Purchase went fine, downloads went fine and the installs seemed to work fine as well.  I downloaded IP and that was ok until I chose a package to install.  Being someone who likes to "window shop' for different packages, I found a few and tried them out...big mistake.  Obviously IP doesn't care for installing and applying packages one after another and it mucked up the system bigtime.  I am sure this is my fault of course, but I will say that now, i am in the same boat as others who have an X64 system with white icons.  I got frustrated late last night and thought I would leave the problem for today, but in the meantime, i thought I would do the right thing and check out the support and forums here and fortunately, i found this post and feel better knowing I'm not the only one with this problem.  I read over Haywood's posts and saw the bad luck he had and the probs he had with support, but I won't care to comment as I have had similiar experiences with support in the past on other things.  I am a DIY guy, so I wanted to find the path of least resistance.  Looks like my best bet is to uninstall and system restore and hope for the best.  Speaking of system restore, i find it funny that Stardock immediately creates a system restore before installing their programs which makes me wonder if they have a lack of confidence in their work.  I will give them credit though in performing this safety measure, as other programs out there don't do that...it's a user thing.

In any case, i will take everyone's suggestions to heart and try out the troubleshooting offered.  At this point, i kinda feel like the others here who just cut their losses and restore their machine back to the boring look of Vista, but hey, at least things are stable again, right?  So i lost 30 bucks...could have been worse.

Reply #13 Top

My icons were also "mucked up" when installing icon packager. I uninstalled and tried again, but the problem was the same. I had to do a system restore and apparently cannot use icon packager with Vista 64.

Reply #14 Top

I think the current IP is bugged on Impulse, I had to format and when I installed IP and went to apply icons half the exe files would become default icons. It too me 2 hours to figure out a fix, install IP through SDC then reboot and update through Impulse.

 

bmetelsky: go to regedit.exe (type in start menu search) and browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex and delete the IconHandler folder, reboot and it should be fixed.

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Reply #15 Top

bmetelsky: go to regedit.exe (type in start menu search) and browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex and delete the IconHandler folder, reboot and it should be fixed.

 

What will be fixed? Will this allow me to use icon packager without the headaches of blank icons?

 

I have the default icons back after doing a system restore. I really would like to use icon packager but it has not worked correctly for me in Vista 64.

Reply #16 Top

What will be fixed? Will this allow me to use icon packager without the headaches of blank icons?

It'll fix the corruption issue, if you follow what I had said above about installing IP through SDC first it should work fine afterwards. But seeing how your problem is solved you wont need to do it.

I suggest installing IP through SDC, rebooting and then updating through Impulse. Something has gone fubar with the Impulse download for some reason and the only way to get the newest version working is to use SDC first.

Reply #17 Top

Where do I download stardock central?

 

Reply #18 Top

Nevermind - I found it. As luck would have it, though, my subscription expired today and I no longer have access to the full product downloads. Will have to wait until I resubscribe to OD - perhaps the bugs will be worked out by then....

Reply #19 Top

I have exactly the same problem - Vista x64, new installation. It's the first time this has happened so, like a good boy, I contacted Stardock Support. 4 days later...nothing.

Maybe someone here can speed them up a bit. :)

Reply #20 Top

https://esupport.stardock.com

Once you go there, click on the "Downloads" link.  There is a batch file posted that should resolve this.  Once you run it, remember to reboot your system.

 

Reply #21 Top

I just installed OD and dock thru impulse and have the white icon problem. I tried ip.bat/reboot and it DIDN'T work. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Jon

 

 

Reply #22 Top

If you have not already done so, install IconPackager.

In IconPackager, under Settings>System Settings you can use the 'Rebuild Icon Cache' and Repair Icon Images buttons, which should help with this issue. If not, try the Repair Shell Icons... button and select "Repair shell icons for all processes" and click OK.

Reply #23 Top

Thank you for your tips. I tried both, and neither worked. I assume that when pushing the button(s), there isn't a long wait for the process to complete?

Thanks, Jon

 

Reply #24 Top

Kendo: I did that whole rebuiding the cache thing and it never worked.

Gonna try that regedit thing , if for no reason other than I live on the edge , cause I'm generally happy with the product in question .....

 

Oh wait . It fixed itself . Never mind. I never noticed.

Reply #25 Top

Quoting JonMaguire, reply 23
Thank you for your tips. I tried both, and neither worked. I assume that when pushing the button(s), there isn't a long wait for the process to complete?

Thanks, Jon

 

Good news!! The registry fix worked. Thanks to all on the forum for the great support.

Jon