Program shortcut icons disappear

I have some folders on my desktop which contain shortcuts to often used programs.
Some of these icons sometimes get lost (quite reliably after I reinstall Windows from scratch and newly create the folder that holds the shortcuts and the shortcuts themselves) and only a white folder thumbnail is shown (not the default folder one).
This has been happening to me on several PCs (both AMD and Intel) ever since Windows 10. This is with all versions of Win 10. The icon is lost only with certain "boutique" programs (i.e. EasyBCD, CoreTemp). I suspect it has something to do with the way the developer has coded the program icon.
I can reliably make the icon come back by doing the following:
- right click - properties
- click change icon and click on the icon that displays
- click ok
- click ok (sometimes it asks for admin permissions)
If I do this sequence TWICE, the icon comes back and sticks for many months, before disappearing again.
Two questions:
- has anyone else noticed this (I find it a royal pain in the neck)
- is there anyway to automate the above described procedure?

dalchina said:

Am I correct in thinking that you mean you recreate the folders and the shortcuts after the clean install, and then later find some of them are blank?

This is what I do: After the clean install my Desktop is (almost) blank. I then create an empty folder (i.e. "Tools") and into this folder I move the shortcuts that the programs create on the Desktop during installation. Most icons are ok, but some (i.e. CoreTemp or EasyBCD) shortcuts' icons are not displayed any more after I close and reopen the folder. The shortcuts work, the name of the shortcut is displayed, but the icon is not there.

As this only happens with a few non mainstream programs, I assume its an issue with how the icon is embedded into the desktop shortcut when the program is installed.

Thanks for the reference to sTabLauncher. Looks good.

Just uninstalled and reinstalled EasyBCD, then moved the shortcut from the desktop to the "Utilities" folder. This is what it looked like after a reboot:



Doing the procedure I described in my first post resulted in this:

no it's not becayse they get lost, cause if you rightclick the shortcut, properties, change icon it's there, for some reason win 10 just won't display it. rather than try to get to the bottom of the mystery i just google for a replacement, download it, and use it.

i can't speak for others, but i've seen it in 1709 as well and it's always the the same program icons. it's like once you move them from the desktop to the folder something breaks.

I have experienced this problem in every version of Windows 10 I have used so far. If I recall correctly, it did not occurr with Windows 8.1