Edit: it's no longer a problem...appears to have just been a temporary fluke in windows.


I am using windows 98 and my icon graphics are getting switched up, e.g. an msdos icon for my text files and a wierd folder icon for my html files.  Are these symptoms of any virus you guys know or is windows just messed up?  Thanks....

I'd guess it's a windows problem from just that much info.  

How often do you format your drive?
Do you have the second edition?

I seem to remember a virus that does this.  It's been a while, so any of the major antivirus packages should find it.

Thanks for the quick reply.

My drive is only a few months old, so it hasn't been reformated except for the day I bought it.  I am running the first edition, but I haven't had problems like this in the past.  It just started a few hours ago.

Thanks, my school allows each student to download a copy of norton antivirus so I will try it.  I quit using it a few months ago when my drive died...I was suspicious that norton might have played a role in it.

Wierd....  I went to install norton and the icons suddenly became correct again.  I continued anyway and did a scan.  No virus found.  It must be a bug in windows, but it seems odd that this hasn't happened before.

Flaky icons can usually be cured by rebuilding the shelliconcache.

[url]http://www.techadvice.com/w98/I/IconCacheFile-rebuild.htm[/url]

I would go the Microsoft down-load site and make sure your '98 OS has all the updates.  May not be specific to this problem but never hurts to have all the available fixes.

Good advice, thank you all.

Windows temporarily stores the icon info in RAM while the computer is running.  And after awhile the info gets stale, and the computer choses the wrong icon for a file.

You can right click on the desktop and chose Refresh, and it will usually snap all back to normal.

Sometimes you will have, for example, the icon for Adobe Acrobat substituting for all your jpg icons.  And even refreshing will not help.  Simply reboot your computer, and all will go back to normal.

If you are using your computer alot, all day, it is not unusual to have to restart several times, and it is a good idea.

If you leave your computer on all day and night,  never shutting down, first thing in the morning, reboot.  Do a complete shutdown, and wait a minute, and boot up.