Windows 10: Some files and folders have strange overlays on the bottom left of their icons.

Hello, this is a problem that has been bugging me for years now.Every few months, for some unknown reason, windows decides that it would be great to put a massive overlay on almost all of my files and folders. This time it's of Visual Studio Code. I need a way to disable all of these overlays, that doesn't require me to go to each file and change an option.Thanks in advance.

:)

 

Icon Overlays less than 15

Hi fantasiom,

I read from an article on ghacks (link below) that there are two places in the registry that the overlays are being "loaded" from.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIcon‌OverlayIdentifiers
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explor‌er\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

Fix Sync icons not showing up in Explorer - gHacks Tech News

The second location is for 32-bit applications running on 64-bit windows. OneDrive is storing the same 6 ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers in both locations. I suspect this is because the OneDrive client is 32-bit, and windows explorer is 64-bit. It appears that
the six overlays in the Wow6432Node are loaded first leaving 9 in the other location.

OneDrive will ask to "install icons" if it not all it's icons are not in the top 15. Installing icons means adding spaces in front of the name in the registry so it appears first alphabetically.

I would suggest adding spaces in front of the "BoxSyncNotSynced", "BoxSyncProblem", and "BoxSyncSynced" registry keys so they appear ahead of or next after the six OneDrive overlay icons. I don't use file locking so I don't feel the other two BoxSync icons
are useful.

Essentially the problem is that the ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers is limited to 15 and One Drive is setup to use 12 of them currently. OneDrive has introduced a new status column instead of overlay icons, but it seems for now this is limited to files-on-demand
functionality.

 

Strange USB-Drive Icons

Hi, I've not looked into this at all, but looking at that folder the one that appears to contain the strange icon is
f4e323bf-0f31-42b6-9ad6-5d5382d3fa83
- I don't have one called 797289b8-812a-4d9e-bda5-91567fd47bc6

Would I be correct in thinking that this ico file is the clue as to which to delete?




And thanks- having deleted the folder it did indeed prove necessary to use Driver Booster as described. Problem solved- for now...

 

Icon overlays in Windows 10

Hi,

There are currently 15 slots allotted for icon overlays in the system image list of Windows 10. 4 of these are reserved for the system, and OneDrive uses 5, leaving six slots for use by other icon overlay handlers. If more than 15 icon overlays are registered
in the system, the extra icon overlays aren't used. This limit of 15 overlay icons applies to Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10.

Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions about your computer.

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