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Environment:
WS2012 RDS infrastructure and a separate WS2016 RDS infrastructure in the same domain, both of which publish several programs as RemoteApps to W10 v22H2 and W11 v22H2 clients. Clients obtain RemoteApps via subscription.
Gradual W11 upgrade is in progress.
On W10 machines, RemoteApp start menu shortcuts have all their normal icons.
When the machines are upgraded-in-place to W11 v22H2, at least so far, the RemoteApp icons are all the "blank document" icon.
If I drill down to the user's Start Menu\Programs folder in %AppData%, the shortcuts have this icon in the Explorer window. But in the shortcuts' Properties, if I click Change Icon, the icon path is correct, the icon files exist in the correct location, and if I select the .ICO file and click OK, then Apply, it shows in the Properties dialog box. But when I close it and refresh the Explorer window, it remains the "blank document" icon.
Other Start shortcuts have their normal icons; it's only RemoteApps that have this problem.
Users can get work done because the tooltips identify the program and still launch the RemoteApp. But would really like to have the icons back!
I have some additional insight. In this system, %AppData% (which contains most RemoteApp assets) is redirected. However, the user's Start Menu is not; it remains in %UserProfile%...\Start Menu. RemoteApp shortcuts are put in the user's Start Menu.
Thus, RemoteApp shortcuts are on C:, but RemoteApp .ICOs are on the network share.
If I copy a RemoteApp's .ICO file to somewhere on C: that the user has access to, click Change Icon in the shortcut, and point it to the location on C:, the icon becomes visible on the shortcut and in the Start Menu.
If I create a new shortcut on the share where %AppData% is redirected to, using the same paths as the RemoteApp shortcuts, and pointing to the .ICO file on the share, the shortcut does NOT show the .ICO. IOW, the problem is not specific to RemoteApp shortcuts, the problem affects ALL shortcuts.
As another test, I redirected a test user's per-user Start Menu to the network share. The icons were still the blank document icon. Redirected AppData back to %UserProfile% and icons came back.
Can also reproduce without RemoteApps. On a network share, create a shortcut to (say) Notepad.exe. Copy any handy .ICO file to the share and select it from the shortcut Properties. The shortcut file icon will become a blank document.
It looks like Windows 11, unlike prior versions, requires the .ICO to be on the local drive. Whether that's by design or a bug, I do not know. But I've submitted it as a bug in the Feedback app, and will hope for a fix in some future decade.
It also looks even more like a Windows 11 shell issue, not an RDS issue, so I've added that tag, which I should have added in the first place.
Here's the answer:
The help text in the Allow the use of remote paths in file shortcut icons Policy says it applies to W8/2012 and later, and that, if not configured, it defaults to disabled. But it has defaulted to enabled here until W11.
So it WAS a bug...in W8/2012 through W10!
