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My custom icons no longer works in Windows 11

Anonymous
2022-04-10T04:14:05+00:00

Hi there

I've been an old user of custom icons for almost everything in Windows, since Windows 95. I have custom icons for drives, folders and mainly shortcuts. All my icon files reside in a mapped network drive called Q: (the referenced path Q: points to is in a physical drive G:)

Everything worked fine even in Windows 10, but when I migrate to Windows 11 the problems started.

With not little work I was able to recover my desktop custom icons and my folder shortcut custom icons. But my application shortcut icons still doesn't work (for example; shortcuts pointing to xlsx, docx, pdf files, etc.), they appear as blank icons. Now I discover that if I reference the path for the icon to the physical drive (G:) they work, but all those that are referenced to the mapped drive (Q:) does not.

I don't really want to to loose the use of my icon specially designed mapped drive and substitute it with the physical drive, I have hundreds of shortcuts customized with icons referenced to Q:

Is there any known solution? I appreciate any help

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-04-19T17:43:25+00:00

    I wrote about my case to the TechRepublic forum, no answer so far. However I finally was able to solve my problem investigating a little more:

    SOLUTION FOUND (Apr 16/2022)

    1. I have to modify the Local Group Policy. 

    Since Win 11 Home Edition doesn’t have the Group Policy Editor tool, I have to use a special method to do that 

    thru the next .bat file: GPEditEnabler.dat:

    @echo off 

    pushd "%~dp0" 

    dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt 

    dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt 

    for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages%%i" 

    pause

    Running the bat file with administrator privileges installed the tool in my PC. Once having the tool, I modify the “Allow the use of remote paths in the file shortcut icons” setting to “Enabled”, 

    into the Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\File Explorer section.

    This solution alone wasn’t enough

    2) I have to create the next Registry Key that complements the LGP:

    Registry Hive HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

    Registry Path Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

    Value Name EnableShellShortcutIconRemotePath

    Value Type REG_DWORD

    Enabled Value 1

    Disabled Value 0

    After this all my custom icons are back

    I hope this helps others like me

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-04-10T19:39:16+00:00

    Nop, that has been made a couple of times without result so far

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-04-10T18:34:44+00:00

    Does rebuilding the icon cache help at all?

    https://www.elevenforum.com/t/rebuild-icon-cach...

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-04-10T13:49:25+00:00

    Thank You very much Greg for your answer. But could be some confusion, because my problem is not on mapping the network drive (that resides on my own PC by the way). The Q: drive is mapped as usual, and as I said, it works fine for certain types of shortcuts (ej: folder shortcuts). Even if I check the icon assigned to one of my file shortcuts (.xlsx for example) the properties show that the icon is the one I choose, I mean, the icon path is reached and the icon file is read. But the icon is not shown, just a blank icon.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-04-10T06:47:53+00:00

    Hi Goritz. I'm Greg, ten time MVP award winner, let's work together to get this fixed.

    See if any of these help to map network drive, use Symlinks or MKlinks with network drive:

    https://www.lifewire.com/map-network-drive-in-w...

    https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-...

    https://pureinfotech.com/map-network-drive-wind...

    https://superuser.com/questions/210824/creating...

    https://www.technospot.net/blogs/how-to-create-...

    If not then I would ask this question at our sister forums for IT Professionals, Q&A forums here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/answers/index.... as Microsoft Community is strictly an end-consumer forum.

    There are also equally good (and sometimes busier) IT Pro forums here:

    https://www.techrepublic.com/forums/

    https://www.spiceworks.com/

    I hope it helps.

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