What happened to the shortcuts of my desktop?!?

[rmollame]

Hi,

I'm a Lightwave 6.5b user on a Win2000 server platform.
Yesterday I've experienced a weird bug, almost surely related to the instability shown by Lightwave's Modeler in many circumstances.
I was working with Modeler when all of a sudden a message box noified me the occurrence of an OS system (unfortunately I don't remember the text) that actually freezed the application. After reboot, all the shortcut icons of my desktop where the same, namely replaced by Layout's icon: besides, during the procedure of creation of a new shortcut, though the OS still formally lets me choose a custom icon, the final icon on the desktop is once again Layout's... Finally, I noticed that something weird has happened also to the icons (i.e. those representing the volumes) of Explorer...
Any ideas?

Every help highly appreciated.

Thanks

Riccardo

[Macet01]

That sounds like a bit more than a problem with Lightwave. With all the garbage flowing around the net today I would almost bet that this is the result of a virus or possibly just a failure of the OS. I had the icons go nutz on me after an OS problem. Run a virus scan to make sure that you aren't harboring any little nasties and then run a check of the OS for any recent changes and for integrity. I really doubt that Lightwave would do this.

[Maxx]

I've seen Windows change icons, rearrange icons, even delete them without my asking it to. (I believe that Bill Gates asks his coders to build these little "features" into Windows to impel someone to upgrade when the time comes... Call me paranoid, but.... :rolleyes: ) Usually, with the amazing changing icons, rebooting the system will fix it, but I don't use custom icons for my programs.

At any rate, I agree with Mace01 - it doesn't really sound like a problem stemming from LW.

Also, I picked up a realtively cheap program called System Suite from Ontrack that includes a registry defragger and cleaner that works miracles on my system. Might be worth checking into.

[rmollame]

Thanks guys,

I think I'll follow your advices. I feared something about viruses (by the way: is Win2000 Server that prone to viruses?) but I as well asked around if by chance the matter could be less serious...

All my best.

Riccardo

[mrunion]

If you can find the PowerToys for Windows 2000 (usually free, unsupported download from MS) they have an option (at least in the XP version) to "restore" the icon settigns to "default".

If this is in the PowerToys stuff, I'll bet Ms has seen this happen before!

(Note: PowerToys is actually many little programs. The one in particular you want is TweakUI.)