Tag: desktop icons

Microsoft Defender Borks up the Start menu icons

Paul

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Microsoft Creates issues

This all started on Friday the 13th, 2023. We all started getting tickets galore for this issue, when we first saw this issue we thought it mgiht be something to do with company’s policies being changed and someone didn’t do their job testing it. Being that I am doing my job and trying to solve the issues that are at hand, I didn’t think twice that it was more globally than just our little corner of the company. As we get back into the office Monday we get even more of these tickets where the icons have disappeared and the little work around we sent out friday night still hasn’t solve some of the issues. Icons from all sorts of places have disappeared including stuff I didn’t even think would happen.

Well there it is, it seems Microsoft released an update that caused all the icons to disappear or not to function at all. I’ve been dealing with this issue for the past 5 days as our company scrambles to get the issue resolved for their employees. We’ve learned a few things and I will be glad to share it with you.

Icon restoration

There are several ways I’ve found that works to help restore the icons in the Start Menu.   One of the easiest way is to go to “Add and remove programs” and modify the app that isn’t showing up and Repair or reinstall if that is the option.  This is what we had to do at our location but that isn’t all we are having to do.  We are also having to do this for like Adobe and even Office 2016 but I am sure this affects all versions of Office.

Other ways you can restore icon is to registry edit the default icons and make them get repopulated with the right Icons.  I even go into default apps and reset that to help push the apps back into place.

Another way people have found tofix this issue at least with Office apps is to run it siliently and let it repair it selve in the background:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\ClientX64\OfficeClickToRun.exe” scenario=Repair platform=x86 culture=en-us DisplayLevel=False

Microsoft Defender

According to Microsoft it was a the Microsoft Defender ASR rules that caused all this in the first place.   I don’t Know how many IT Admins are happy right now, I am sure not because of all this that happened but It really makes you wonder how this got past the pre-test phase and how anyone would push out an update like this that caused so much trouble.

Many people are wondering how this happened but My real question is will it happened again.  This isn’t going to be a big post but a short one to help those fix the issue at hand and hopefully we get it solved as quickly as possible and everyone get’s back to a normal routine.

Undeleting the Recycle Bin in Vista!!

Paul1 Reply

Having been using Windows Vista there are some things you must remember with Vista.  You can easily delete the recycle bin or even the Compuer icon with much thought.  I recently had a problem with that.  My son wanted to play on my computer and hit the delete key and hit enter.  So there I was without a recycle bin.  Thanks to a little figuring out, I’ve come to understand that it is just as easy to put back the icon.  Unlike Ubuntu and other linux distros if you delete the recycle bin, you have to go through some hoops.  I know I have used them in the past.  So let’s start out with what vista says when you try to delete the recycle bin.

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There it says you must go to the personalization menu to fix that.  Ok so I go there and then I would need to click this:

You would have to click on “Change Desktop Icons” and then you are almost home.  Here is where you have some choices.

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You will need to put a check mark in the “Recycle Bin” box and you are set to go off and do other wonderful stuff.  if you are like me and you want to have network icons and computer icons on your desktop well check those off too.  The Computer icon is useful if you need to get to the hard drive.  The network is useful if you want to get out to your local network. I should also mention the control panel, that can be useful from time to time so it is all about what you want to make space be like.  You want to have it neat and spacious then you wouldn’t want to clutter your desktop if you want several programs at your fingertips then yes do what you want.  I’ve recently discovered how useful it is to have a clean desktop.  Don’t know why but I’ve begun to work on keep my screen desktop organized.

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