hastor Oct 4, 2017 @ 3:57pm
Some shortcut icons blank in 4k (but not in 1080p)!
I've seen threads about blank icons on the desktop, but none of those solutions worked, and my situation seems very odd.

After upgrading from a 1080p TV to a 4k TV, connected to the same HDMI port on my PC, half of my Steam icons turned into awhite blank. Here's the weird part - changing my desktop resolution back to 1080p causes them to return.

None of the methods I've seen fix the issue in 4k, though some game icons were not affected to begin with. If I go to the shortcut properties it even shows the correct graphic as the currently selected icon, both as the icon, and in the corner of the properties window. I've even tried re-selecting the icon file here, but it doesn't change anything. I've verified integrity of game files, cleared Windows thumbnail cache, deleted and re-created the icons a million times. The blank ones are always blank until I change the resolution to 1080p, then they magically return.

This only affected icons made by Steam, the couple dozen other icons on my desktop are fine.

Little Nightmares is an example of a blank icon, while The Magic Circle is an example of one that was fine.

Running Windows 10 64-bit
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
Jegahl Jun 25, 2018 @ 10:35pm 
Yep keeps happening to me as well. It's a weird bug. I even manually reinserted the thumbnails and they eventually went back to being blank.
hastor Jul 4, 2018 @ 10:33am 
Same, still persists. I just quit using desktop shortcuts and rely on my steam library now. At first it makes the icon, but it disappears within a week or two at most. Switching to 1080p always brings them back, so they aren't missing or anything. None of the solutions for replacing lost icons work, including, as you mentioned, manually adding it.

So odd that this affects ONLY icons created in Steam. No other program has given me anything like this issue, and I have quite a crowded desktop with everything from mainstream apps to homebrew utilities. All of their icons are fine. Steam's own icon is always fine as well, just not the ones it creates for games.
mrmike_49 Mar 29, 2021 @ 7:32pm 
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/125988-change-icon-cache-size-windows.html

will not fix existing blank icons, but should prevent it from happening again after you manually repair each icon
dumpst3rm4n Mar 29, 2021 @ 7:34pm 
Drivers problem?
Older versions of drivers ussualy don't support 4k much.
hastor Jun 30, 2021 @ 7:01pm 
I'm still using the same PC from 2018, but haven't installed an icon to my desktop since my comment above, which has been fine. Kinda forgot it was a thing haha. I'll have to give it a try sometime. I was always using the latest NVIDIA drivers on my GTX 1080 which is still what I'm running (with newer drivers lol)...
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Date Posted: Oct 4, 2017 @ 3:57pm
Posts: 5