Shortcut Icon blank when .ico file is located on a directory defined with an UNC Path

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm currenty facing an issue on an newly installed Windows 11 Build 22621.1105 machine.

Desktop Shortcuts where the icon file is located on a network share defined by an UNC path doesn't the ICON (only the blank Icon Symbol).

During the selection of the .ico file in the properties of the Shortcut and in the file chooser the Icon is displayed fine. The Desktop Icon itself remains blank

After changing the path of the .ico file to a local drive eg. C:\temp\Icon.ico the Icon is displayed correctly.

Is this behavior caused by some security restrictions of Win11?

Any help how I can get the Icons to be displayed correctly would be highly appreciated.

Thanks
Wolfgang

Answer 1

Give this a try:

1. Open Group Policy Editor
2. Navigate to, Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > File Explorer
3. Enable Allow the use of remote paths in file shortcut icons

On top of the above steps, you may also need to create a registry key:

1. Open Registry Editor
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
3. Create a new DWORD key Value Name EnableShellShortcutIconRemotePath Value Type REG_DWORD Enabled Value 1 Disabled Value 0

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Please accept as an answer if this was helpful.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure this would have been an issue in Win10 as well. The issue is that you have a network involved. The shell needs to be quick and it needs to be secure. Anything on the desktop is scanned by AV. So if you put a document (not a shortcut) on the desktop then when the shell has to refresh that includes scanning the document. For icons they have to be scanned as well and if they are on a network drive then that requires a network call.

The shell does cache icons so it is possible that once you get the icon to show up then it should be fine until the cache is flushed but you will have no way of knowing when that is.

The actual problem though, I suspect, is that Windows doesn't restore mapped drives at login anymore. That was changed back in Win10 I believe. So just because you mapped a drive doesn't mean Windows wastes the time reconnecting to it. There is no benefit in doing that until you actually hit the drive. When you do access the drive then it'll trigger the reconnect. In general you don't notice this issue. My running guess is that when the shell needs the icon the drive hasn't been reconnected. I'm not sure if Windows has a time limit or other restrictions on how long it can wait for an icon to be retrieved. But all this is theory on my part.

If possible try using the UNC path directly instead of a mapped drive and see if your problem goes away. While you'll have similar behavior, I believe the shell tends to work better with icons from UNC paths.