Icon appearance changes

Some icons on my desktop, eg. Google, had a distinct appearance peculiar to themselves until recently. While most of them have retained their specific appearance others simply have a 'generic' look like the IE icon. Is their any way that I can give them an exclusive look again? Thank you.

 

The trouble is that all those icons are stored in temp files which are automatically deleted after so long. You can "capture" the icon and keep it, but it's a lot of bother. The repair icons feature in TweakUI doesn't work for web links.

Daizy pointed me to a neat program called FavOrg from PC World that lets you rebuild the icons from your bookmarks, if the websites support it. It used to be a freebie, but I think they want some money for it now. I like that program- it's easier for me to spot the familiar icon than scroll alphabetically through the files in My Favorites, but it's not for dial up connections. When you run it, it contacts every bookmark you have, to check for an icon, and Norton goes nuts reporting cookies and active X prompts!

If anyone knows how to get the icons that came with my software back on my Start Menu, I'll buy you a beer or a coffee in deepest appreciation. They disappear, too, after a day or two, except for the M$ ones, which seem permanent.

Incidentally, the path for the "optional" icons cache is
%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll
I use those for the folders on the desktop, and there are lots of choices.

Johanna
who just said more about icons than anyone wanted to know, but it's one of her pet peeves...

 

Thanks, Johanna, for being so informative. At least I know now that it's not some fault with my computer, or the result of a registry cleaning.