Broken icons after Fall Creators Update

[Solandri]

So after 5 years of answering questions, I get to ask my first question!

The Fall Creators Update broke many of my icons. About two dozen of my program icons are missing (on the desktop, in the Start menu, in the quick launch bar, I don't remember if file explorer is affected - I'll check when it happens again and update here). Most of them are replaced by a blank page (see below). Others get a generic program rectangle instead of a blank page (see Intel Extreme Tuning app in pic). The programs still run and work fine, just their icon is messed up.

Not all programs are affected. Not all file associations are affected. The PDF one is really weird. I've associated .pdf files with Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat's program icon shows up correctly. The PDF icon shows up correctly in the file associations default program selection window. But all my PDFs still have a blank icon.

Word and Excel along with about half of the Office suite are affected, but not the other half. So it's not limited to non-Microsoft programs. And it affects different programs installed via the same installer.

I have tried:

• 
  ■Deleting the icon cache (which is a lot harder than the guides for older versions of Windows make it out to be).
  ■Changing icon size.
  ■Changing resolution (long shot - changing color depth used to force an icon cache refresh, but apparently Win 10 only supports 32 bit color depth).
  ■Creating new shortcuts to the program.
  ■Installing all updates available for the Fall Creators Update.
  ■Rolling back the update restores the correct icons. So they're not being lost or deleted, just the info on the icons is somehow not being transferred to the Fall Creators Update.

The only way I've found to fix it is by reinstalling the program (reinstalling Acrobat also fixed the PDF icon). But I didn't want to waste time doing that for two dozen programs. So up to now, I've just been deferring the update, hoping Microsoft would eventually fix the problem (yes I reported it to them). Well, they haven't fixed it, and now I get a message saying they're ending security updates for the version of Win 10 I'm running, and I need to update to the Fall Creators Update to continue getting security updates.

On top of that, Windows Update has gotten super-aggressive about updating to the Fall Creators Update. Originally I simply elected to defer it, but apparently you can't do that anymore. It keeps auto-downloading (I'm close to exceeding my quota with my ISP this month because of this behavior). And if I step away from the computer for about an hour, it auto-updates itself. My old trick of disabling the Windows Update service doesn't stop this either.

So since Microsoft has forced me into a "fix it myself" or "live with it broken" situation, I ask here: How do I get the Fall Creators Update to display the right icons?

 

[Colif]

1st question: Try creating a new local user and see if it has same problems? If that works, could mean user is corrupted. Easy to make new one admin, copy contents of c\users\username of old user onto new to give it same access. Just need to set up browsers, login to steam and maybe a few other things, Takes 5 minutes

2nd question: Have you looked in settings/update & security/windows update
advanced options
delivery optimisation
advanced options (again)
here you can set limits for downloads and uploads

these steps don't work for me (but i am on Ethernet) - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028229/windows-set-your-data-limit

this might though I can't tick Enabling this policy will automatically download updates, even over metered data connections as it clears as soon as I try - https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-updates-over-metered-connection-windows-10-fall-creators-update

 

[Solandri]

1st question: Try creating a new local user and see if it has same problems? If that works, could mean user is corrupted. Easy to make new one admin, copy contents of c\users\username of old user onto new to give it same access. Just need to set up browsers, login to steam and maybe a few other things, Takes 5 minutes

Damn. That was a really good idea that I was sure was going to work. But no, it didn't. Any new account I make ends up with the same broken program icons and file associations.

I'm almost out of quota with my cable ISP and have 5 more days before my next billing cycle starts. I'm just gonna leave the Fall Creator's Update installed and live with the broken icons until then, rather than risk it doing yet another 4-8 GB download that pushes me over quota. This whole situation with being unable to turn off updates/auto-downloads is just ridiculous.

 

[Colif]

Try this

right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC


Another potential fix is a repair install but leave that until after you get more dl space as it needs an ISO of win 10 - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html

 

[Solandri]

So I finally got some time to revisit this. I decided to bite the bullet and just reinstall all the programs with broken icons, and I think I found the problem.

These programs won't uninstall. When I try to uninstall all of them, they all pop up a dialog asking me to enter the location of the installer I used when I first installed the program. The pre-loaded directory in this dialog for all the affected programs are directories on my NAS. i.e. When I installed each of these programs, rather than installing from a file on my local drive, I double-clicked the install file directly on my NAS.

I have no idea why that should cause the problem I'm having. Unfortunately, I've deleted most of the original install files from my NAS (replaced them with newer versions), and the new installers don't seem to satisfy the uninstaller. So I'm gonna have to clean up the mess manually and reinstall these programs.

The lone bright spot is that the affected Steam games seem to fix themselves if I simply verify their files.

 

[Colif]

steam is special, it doesn't use registry settings, the client can find games moved onto hdd, if you just link folder as a library location in the steam client, it does the rest.

have you tried a 3rd party uninstaller like revo?

I don't know why it broke the shortcuts, its not a common problem.

 

[Solandri]

I had a night of panicking as Office would not run nor uninstall nor reinstall, and I needed it to get some work done. So I tried reverting back to the previous version of Windows, and lo and behold all these broken programs would uninstall just fine from the previous version. So the problem is definitely something about the Fall Creator's Update not correctly carrying over the installed programs info from the previous version of Windows.

Anyhow, I uninstalled my list of broken programs under the older build of Windows, did the Fall Creator's Update, then reinstalled everything. The only hiccup is that one of the older Visual C++ libraries seems to be similarly affected. Some of my program reinstallations threw up the same error dialog I was getting before telling me the original installation msi was missing, except it was for the Visual C++ library rather than the program itself. But in this case canceling the dialog resulted in the install completing instead of canceling. And the programs which triggered this seem to run just fine.

I finished reinstalling everything around 3 am so hopefully the nightmare is over. I think I'll be moving more of my productivity apps into my Win 7 virtual machine I normally use for reading email and doing my banking, just so my ability to work is not held in limbo by a broken Win 10 auto-update.

Thanks everyone who tried to help.