Interesting display issue

[Bighorn]

Clients' computer works fine but we can't find what program has screwed up the onscreen display of icons. I created a new user with same rights which is okay so it must be a corrupted profile. This image shows the messed up icons, upper left has some stacked, single click on one shows a wide box containing each actual icon. The tiles and Start menu are normal.

 

[Trouble]

I assume you've tried the whole Auto Arrange and Align to Grid as well as Sort By.
Does this involve multiple monitors? I've seen some strange desktop icon behavior lately when there was two or more monitors involved.
Since most of them appear to be shortcuts have you tried deleting them and re-creating them?

 

[Bighorn]

Single monitor, enabled Desktop view on the Taskbar, can get all the icons that are active. Tried all the icon settings on the right-click of the Desktop.

 

[Trouble]

Ever had any of those third party programs (shells) that are suppose to "customize" the windows desktop installed (fences, blinds, etc.,)?
It may be that such an install followed by a less than complete uninstall may have left remnants and what you are seeing is the consequence.

How long??
Any chance that a restore point might exist prior to this?
Have you tried Autoruns just to see if you can spot it? Since it doesn't seem to be impacting new users then it's likely something in HKEY_CURRENT_USER but that's of little help if you don't have a hint as to the culprit.
A restore point might be the best immediate solution if you have one.

 

[Bighorn]

As far as she can remember nothing in the way of customizing [not very helpful].

I've run Autoruns logged in as both original and new user, saved the results as separate files now just have to do the comparison of them. No restore points thanks to how Win10 works.

 

[Trouble]

Good luck.
Keep us posted, interested to hear if you manage to resolve it.

User profile corruption is a giant P.I.T.A.

Curious if you've happened to try a Safe Mode boot, just to see if the desktop acts the same?

 

[Bighorn]

Yea, Safe boot and clean boot same result.

 

[Bighorn]

Forgot to mention about doing the icon cache rebuild, didn't help. I'm starting to wonder if 56 icons on the Desktop with a 1440x900 resolution may be part of the issue? Maybe some explanation/training is in order?

Update: removed all but 18 and no change.

 

[Wolfie]

Hi Bighorn,

do you have any scaling settings in place?.

 

[Bighorn]

Just the 125% on 1440x900. I still have some icons stacked on each other at upper left corner but it's weird to have the bluish box the icons are on but only when clicking once on an icon.

 

[davehc]

Open the old control panel - system - advanced system settings.
Click the Advanced tab - Performance.
UNtick Show translucent selection rectangle

 

[Bighorn]

Thanks, DaveHC, didn't help but I did reset the choice of letting Windows decide, it was on Custom. I did notice that it's showing that box also with the hover of the mouse.

 

[davehc]

Yes From time past, When setting up, I have always set that panel on performsnce. It can be “ fined up” later