Windows 10: Issue with desktop shortcut icons and overlays

Hi everyone, I am facing an issue with shortcuts icons and overlays. Basically when I refresh the desktop right click and refresh, the shortcut icons would refresh and reappear very quickly, but only the overlays the small arrow marks would delay to reappear by 1 second or so. The shortcuts function fine, but this delay in refresh really is annoying and I'm sure something is wrong, because the happened suddenly since yesterday. Anybody has an idea on the cause of this?I am using HP omen 15 2021, 5600H and rtx 3060 with windows11 preinstalled.

:)

 

Desktop Icon Shortcut Overlay Randomly Changing

Thank you for your reply. I can't recall when this last work, probably over the summer. It just annoyed me enough to finally post it as I repeatedly was refreshing the desktop to temporarily mask the symptoms. I performed the following:

• System restore point created
• Downloaded and ran restore overlay icon restore reg; restored shortcut overlay icon only for a few minutes, then disappeared entirely, then returned to previous behavior
  
• Non-Microsoft services disabled via MSConfig and unnecessary services remaining disabled via Task Manager/Startup Tab
• Rebooted

Problem persists. Shortcut overlay arrows disappeared, then reverted to the random rotating icons a few minutes later.

Thank you.

 

BUG: Desktop shortcut icons, overlay keeps changing

I have this issue as well. Shortcut icon overlays sometimes disappear, sometimes change to some other icon. I tried running dism and sfc commands, but they didn't find any issues.

I have 2 applications that have custom overlays - Dropbox and TortoiseSVN. They were not causing issues on Windows 7 / 8, so I don't think they suddenly are an issue. Also I had
Stadock Fences 2 desktop organization software (also used before on Win 7/8), I though it might be an issue, but after disabling it, issues with shortcut overlays remained.

Windows 10 was installed as clean install, not upgrade.

When shortcut overlays are missing, opening right-mouse context menu on desktop and choosing "refresh" brings them back.

 

Shortcut Overlays appearing on non-shortcut icons on desktop


Hello,
I recently purchased a new Windows 10 laptop, and it has an odd issue which my old Windows 10 machine didn't...

All the icons on the desktop (except the Recycle Bin) are showing shortcut overlays (little blue arrows on the lower-left corner of the icon) - whether the icon is an actual shortcut (just a pointer to a file/folder stored elsewhere) or whether it is a file (stored in the "C:\Users\MY_USER_ACCOUNT\Desktop" folder).

This is really irritating me, since I frequently use the desktop for temporary files (like downloads, etc) and like to clean it up every so often.

I have attempted to "restore" the default shortcut behavior via registry settings (Shortcut Arrow Icon - Change, Remove, or Restore in Windows 10 Windows 10 Customization Tutorials ) but that didn't change the issue I am seeing.

I would like the overlays to display properly - with overlays on actual shortcuts, and no overlays on files/folders located in the "Desktop" folder on disk.

Has anyone else experienced this behavior? Any ideas on how to fix it?

Thanks in advance!
~Heather