URL Icons

This started when I was using Win98, 2nd Ed. and of course carried over when I up-dated to Windows XP. For some reason when I find a favourite website and send it to my desktop as shortcut....it might save the URL icon for awhile but when I log off my PC and and log back on later the icon changes to the generic IE icon. Why can't I retain the URL's own icon?

 

The icon you're talking about is called a favicon. It's downloaded and placed in your temporary internet files when you download the web page. If you have IE set to delete the TIFs on exit it'll be gone as soon as you close IE. Even if you don't delete them on exit, it'll still disappear eventually when the file gets replaced by a newer one (after your TIFs folder reaches the max size you have it set for). Until you log off however the icon is loaded into memory so it stays put. Once you log off it gets kicked out of memory and it's bye bye custom icon until you view the web page again. This also goes for those that you have in your favorites. You can search for the icon in your TIFs and when you find it copy it to some other location on your hard drive. Then, right click on the icon on the desktop and choose properties. Click the change icon button and then browse to the location you saved the icon and select it. You won't lose it anymore if you do this. If you do a find for the file search for *.ico in your TIFs. This should find all of them that are available.

 

Here's a nifty utility you can use to save the ones that are in your favorites if you want.