Spontaneous reversion of icon color depth occurred yesterday and I am beginning to feel nauseous looking at my desktop today. :)

I've tried changing the Display Settings to various Color Depths and Screen Areas, tried changing the Effects "Show Icons using all possible colors", tried rebooting multiple times, tried changing the color schemes, have used Tweak UI's Repair Icon Cache, and have even delved into the Registry under HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics to tweak the Shell Icon BPP value.

All to no avail. :(

The info I've found so far on the internet has not been encouraging. I've found two cases reporting similar symptoms that never did find a solution, but rather had a spontaneous recovery.

Anyone have ideas or experience this?

IBM NetVista Windows 2000 SP4
Pentium 4, 2GB RAM, Integrated Graphics (i845G)

You could try installing an icon themer like IconPackager (http://www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager/index.asp).

At first I believed this was due to a Tivoli Remote Control Display Adapter that corporate had installed on my machine. After a couple shenanigans I got that thing uninstalled but that didn't fix the issue.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Intel Integrated Graphics driver. Again no dice.

Finally I stumbled upon this Usenet post (http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.win2000.general/browse_thread/thread/a5b268ed823211fb/5e043275d93e6eae?lnk=st&q=windows+problem+%2216+color+icons%22&rnum=6#5e043275d93e6eae) that recommended running/exiting NetMeeting. That didn't work either.

But the very last suggestion given there... was to try using a freeware application called ActivIcons (http://www.cursorarts.net/ca_ai_d.html). Under that program's Options menu, I selected Repair Icon Cache. w00t w00t! Problem fixed.

Add that one to my list of "killer freeware apps". I can't begin to describe the bliss that 256+ colors can bring. How did we ever survive Windows 3.1? :)

I mainly used DOS until Windows 98. XD

sorry 'bout the lateness on my part....Ive been extremely busy and pc-less for about a month :(

you can restore your icon cache from within windows, thats all those icon proggies do - run that command :) Another one you can also use is MS own 'powertoy' Tweak UI. It does alot of that stuff. The function I always used was getting rid of those ugly shortcut arrows !

tweak UI does have a win98/2000 version too. CLICKITY (http://www.helpwithwindows.com/windows98/download.html)

The newer tweak UI will probably work too FYI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx)

mtfbwya

Thanks Astro. :) But...
have used Tweak UI's Repair Icon Cache...
All to no avail. :(

Don't know what ActivIcons' repair did that was so different from TweakUI's. :giveup:

lolz....sorry tk. astro: 0 ; skim reading:1

out of curiousity, did you use the old version of tweak UI or the new(XP) one??

mtfbwya