Tile Icon Fix

While I was trying to sort out a connection issue today I accidentally started MSN messenger. For some reason that one act changed the icon for a file type when viewing a folder in “tiles” and “icons”. Unfortunately the effect was on .htm files. These files before this showed a lovely Firefox icon, as they should. After said dreaded event these icons showed the icon for Internet Explorer. I can’t stand IE and I felt ill. It immediately became my mission to fix it.

The file associations were not screwed up, double click the icon and Firefox opened the page. I also checked the settings for the Folder options and selected icon for file types, nope all good there. But the damn icon stayed the same. I started searching and everything I found related to the associations and the Folder options that I had already checked.

By this point in time I was willing to change the view to “details”, which displayed the correct icon (go figure). But then that would mean working a bit different and I did not want to do that. I have my download directory as “Tiles” or “Icons” because I can then quickly see what type a file is and what is in it. I have a lot of images for web pages and such and this is the quickest way of identifying them for me. Plus the problem just plain irked me.

Then I found this gem of advice and it highlights something about XP that I did not know and I found my fix.

If you go to the desktop, right click and go to properties and go to the following menu:

→ Appearance → Effects

Select the check box for “Use Large Icons” then click apply. Now go back and change it back by unselecting the check box and then apply again. After this my icons were restored. So what the heck did that do?

Well apparently this “clears the cache” from where and how has me stuffed. But it worked. So I am just passing that on, just don’t ask me how it works. It supposedly fixes issues with the wrong program opening and other stuff, I can’t verify that though. The icon thing… worked a treat, still has me buggered as to how. I guess it is another example of a screwy Windows thing with an unlikely resolution, what’s new?

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Huge Free Wallpaper Resource

I don’t know about you guys but I have had some real trouble in the past finding wallpaper for my desktop. One thing is that a lot of sites that offer wallpaper are full of spyware, pop-ups or some other nasty crap. Not only that there is usually not that much on offer and what there is of it is rubbish. InterfaceLIFT is totally different and I was surprised at the offerings and what they cover.

Interface lift offers hundreds of wallpapers for download. In addition to this they offer a huge range of resolutions to suit. From an average of 320 X 240 right up to 2560 X 1600. Not all images offer the same resolutions or the range but it looks like there is something for everyone and purpose. They also range from nice pleasant landscape pictures to futuristic and Photoshop’ed images. Nice. Looks like most, if not all wallpapers are free.

I was impressed at the extra offerings that I found as well. There are icons, themes plus a developers section. Some of the developers tools are not free.

The most amazing thing is that there is stuff for Mac, Windows, Linux and Mac! There is an especially nice selection of Mac icons. The name definately fits this site, check out InterfaceLIFT to give the view from your desktop a refreshing new look. Just one tip: Careful with the embeded ads that appear in the list of available downloads, not a nice way to place ads but they are fairly obvious. The only critism I would have on an otherwise nice resource.