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General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: eagl on July 23, 2017, 10:29:35 AM

Title: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: eagl on July 23, 2017, 10:29:35 AM
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...
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 23, 2017, 12:13:28 PM
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/ (https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/fix-hard-drives-chkdsk-windows-10/)
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: eagl on July 23, 2017, 09:30:34 PM
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.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 24, 2017, 01:54:06 AM
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.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: eagl on July 25, 2017, 02:47:05 PM
I can't even load the "latest" drivers... I am using the last published legacy driver package.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 25, 2017, 02:55:01 PM
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?
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: eagl on July 27, 2017, 04:35:18 PM
The latest driver package aborts with an error that my video chip is too old and I need to use their legacy driver package.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 27, 2017, 04:48:02 PM
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 (https://www.wagnardsoft.com/content/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-v17072-released) is crucial.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Chalenge on July 27, 2017, 11:30:57 PM
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
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 28, 2017, 01:59:49 AM
Thanks for your input, Chalenge. You made me notice I got target fixated to the drivers only.  :cheers:
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Chalenge on July 28, 2017, 03:00:51 AM
If it hadn't happened to me I wouldn't know about it.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: ACE on July 28, 2017, 07:44:32 AM
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.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 28, 2017, 09:28:44 AM
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.  (https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=846[/url)
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Chalenge on July 28, 2017, 04:36:44 PM
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.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: ACE on July 29, 2017, 10:41:11 AM
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.
 (https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=846[/url)

It just resets my resoloution.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Bizman on July 29, 2017, 03:35:16 PM
Very strange. That sounds like your monitor is giving erroneous information for the video card. What type of a cable are you using? VGA (analog), DVI or HDMI?

Also, it still might be a driver auto-update issue.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: ACE on July 29, 2017, 05:38:37 PM
Very strange. That sounds like your monitor is giving erroneous information for the video card. What type of a cable are you using? VGA (analog), DVI or HDMI?

Also, it still might be a driver auto-update issue.

It happened with my old monitor and now my new one 144hz asus. I use DVI D I think. I know it's dvi.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: mikeWe9a on July 30, 2017, 11:29:34 AM
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.

Go into msconfig and check the boot tab.  Under boot options, check to see if "base video" is checked.  If it is, uncheck it, as this will force a boot into a lower resolution.

Mike
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: ACE on July 31, 2017, 04:05:25 PM
Go into msconfig and check the boot tab.  Under boot options, check to see if "base video" is checked.  If it is, uncheck it, as this will force a boot into a lower resolution.

Mike

checked that its fine
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Chalenge on August 04, 2017, 08:06:22 PM
With regards to the original post the latest Windows 10 update (version 1703) should fix the problem.
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: eagl on August 08, 2017, 06:52:51 AM
With regards to the original post the latest Windows 10 update (version 1703) should fix the problem.

When I rebooted after a big update yesterday, the very first reboot after applying changes resulted in the display problem.  No text for any of the icons, and the bottom task bar and notifications area messed up.

Another reboot put it back to normal, as usual.

On my desktop, the last reboot shuffled all my icons around on my desktop.  Super annoying when windows decides that the way I have organized the desktop isn't right, and shuffles them and stuffs them all on the left side of monitor 1. 
Title: Re: windows 10 icons sometimes no text after reboot
Post by: Chalenge on August 09, 2017, 01:16:49 PM
You're lucky if you don't see yet another update come down.

Yeah, precisely why I started using DesktopOK more than a year ago. As to white icons, yes it's MS messing with us yet again.

Microsoft is doing something that is preventing Firefox from normal operations. They have not admitted it, but you can see it in action if you cold boot and try to initiate Firefox immediately. I really want to do an OS reset to get things back to a pristine condition, but that means reinitiating DCS AGAIN, and some of those modules are limited in activations.