2007-07-13 - Microsoft/Windows XP disappearing Icons
For those of you who have had their icons disappear in your control panel or on your desktop and have no idea how to get them back, here is the solution.
After researching google for about an hour it turns out that all you need to do is;
Right click on your desktop
Click Properties
Click the settings tab
Change the colour settings from 32bit to 16bit and click apply
Change the colour settings back from 16bit to 32bit and click apply
Click OK - this should have solved your problem...
Disappearing icons are apparently the result of a Windows XP service pack update and in some cases other Windows updates which cause the icons to cache - the method above forces the cache to clear and rebuild.
