windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot

[eagl]

Hello,

Sometimes when I reboot, my windows 10 desktop icons have no text, and the icons are spaced out a bit differently.  Rebooting again fixes it.  Any ideas?  My computer is a Lenovo T420s with the dual nvidia 420m/iGPU graphics setup.

It didn't used to do this.  I'm hoping that the latest video drivers don't have some sort of glitch that cause this, since pretty much none of the hardware in the computer has ongoing driver support for win10 so there won't be any new drivers...

[Bizman]

If it's only occasional, it can be anything from failing hardware to driver glitches - or even Windows glitches especially if you got automatically upgraded from Win7.

If you've recently updated your video drivers, you can revert to the previous ones to see if the issue goes away.

Running checkdisk wouldn't hurt, either. Here's how: https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/fix-hard-drives-chkdsk-windows-10/

[eagl]

It's very consistent so I suspect that the video driver isn't initializing the video chip properly.  Annoying since I'm using "final" vid drivers for both the iGPU and nvidia 420M plus final optimus drivers.  "Everything works" except sometimes the text on the icons is missing after a reboot, and another reboot fixes it.

Stupid problem to have with mature/final drivers.

[Bizman]

Well, fwiw the Nvidia drivers published during the last year or so don't work at all on my rig, I get a BSOD with them. Try older ones version by version until you find ones that work with your system. The incompatibility with your system may be due to support for features that are not present in your card so you won't basically lose anything.

[eagl]

I can't even load the "latest" drivers... I am using the last published legacy driver package.

[Bizman]

Now I'm a little confused: What do you mean by you "can't even load the latest drivers"? You certainly should be able to download them from the Nvidia site no matter what. Does running their installers give you incompatibility messages or what?

[eagl]

The latest driver package aborts with an error that my video chip is too old and I need to use their legacy driver package.

[Bizman]

Ahh, I see. Then the remedy is to use the legacy packages. Even those can vary. More important, especially when trying an older driver, using a driver cleaner such as DDU https://www.wagnardsoft.com/content/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-v17072-released is crucial.

[Chalenge]

This may be a two-headed snake, older hardware and a corrupt cache, but rebuilding the icon cache will probably fix your problem.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5645-rebuild-icon-cache-windows-10-a.html

[Bizman]

Thanks for your input, Chalenge. You made me notice I got target fixated to the drivers only. 

[Chalenge]

If it hadn't happened to me I wouldn't know about it.

[ACE]

Going off the OP post every week or so when I reboot my computer everything resets. All my icons move to the left. My screen resolution drops to terrible quality and I gotta change everything back. Windows 10 upgraded from 7. Any ideas.

[Bizman]

Does it suffice to just change the resolution or do you have to reinstall the drivers?

I had a case of the latter with Win8 way back. It appeared that Windows automatically "updated" the video drivers to an earlier version during shutdown, causing 800x600 resolution only. If that applies to you, start by downloading the latest working video drivers, use to get rid of all previous ones and install the fresh ones. IIRC you might even be able to stop Windows updating video drivers through that tool. If not, there's other ways to do it but since there's several versions of Win10 out there I won't provide any links for that.

[Chalenge]

The software I use to refresh the icon positions is DesktopOK: http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/DesktopOK

DesktopOk Can recall the position of icons if you reposition them at different resolutions, for instance. If you have more than a single monitor on Windows 10 it is a must-have piece of software.

[ACE]

Does it suffice to just change the resolution or do you have to reinstall the drivers?

I had a case of the latter with Win8 way back. It appeared that Windows automatically "updated" the video drivers to an earlier version during shutdown, causing 800x600 resolution only. If that applies to you, start by downloading the latest working video drivers, use to get rid of all previous ones and install the fresh ones. IIRC you might even be able to stop Windows updating video drivers through that tool. If not, there's other ways to do it but since there's several versions of Win10 out there I won't provide any links for that.

It just resets my resoloution.