All Steam Shortcut Files have become blank / have become .url files.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

This randomly happened one day like a week or so, ago.

I think it was after I deleted all of the files in my steam folder, to pretty much reinstall steam without having to remove my games, cause my steam was running really slow for some reason.


I've tried searching up answers, and every single one I've read doesn't help. You can go into properties of the desktop shortcut and select the game icon from the game .exe file in the steam game folder.

But, for TF2, I can't even do that. Because it's literally halflife icon for some reason.


I thought by now i would've been able to find a solution that makes my computer recognize steam shortcuts and make them have their icons back.

But still nothing...


The closest "solution" ive found so far on google searches is by "selecting open with, and clicking internet browser"

But I literally don't even have an "open with" option when right-clicking the shortcuts.

When I go into folders, and actually click on "desktop" folder sub, it shows the internet globe icon as the TF2 shortcut icon.

Other steam games are just blank white pages...

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

^^^ Idk what you did but every single response I've tried to post, quoting yours, it's broken and my text becomes your quote.


anyways.....


Did all of this. Except #6.

Upon right clicking the games with just blank paper as their icon, there is no "open with" option. Only an "open" option and it shows the steam logo.

Also the "properties" option just opens this

İlk olarak ุ tarafından gönderildi:

https://imgur.com/a/n0rSVW0

same thing as in that image. no place where I can select internet browser.

icons are still blank.

also idk what u mean with the microsoft edge. I use chrome.

[xarvn]

DISM and SFC are used to repair corrupt system files in the OS. Use of these are essentially standard practice and should not cause more problems. Step 5 resets the app associations to default values. As a consequence Microsoft Edge will supplant Chrome as your default browser. Simply setting Chrome to default will correct this.

Just to be on the safe side, and in light of the problem with quoting my comments, I suggest you first repair your Steam installation. This is done by running steamservice.exe with the "/repair" switch. If you don't know how to do this then I can explain further. Afterwards follow the procedure I outlined in the following thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/4031348273658006638/?tscn=1702378531

[xarvn]

In lieu of repairing the steam installation, you can also reinstall Steam in its entirety as you did before. Just be sure to leave your steamapps and userdata folders, otherwise you will have to re-download all your games and will also lose your screenshots, Steam Cloud files and other settings.

[Iceira]

also sounds like a manual reset of steam icon cache after a old guide with wipe usredata.
only way to get all windows steam desktop shortcut to go Blank, problem is he dont mention he did it. and thats why no one bother with asking did he do this..

[xarvn]

İlk olarak Iceira tarafından gönderildi:

also sounds like a manual reset of steam icon cache after a old guide with wipe usredata.
only way to get all windows steam desktop shortcut to go Blank, problem is he dont mention he did it. and thats why no one bother with asking did he do this..

Yes. Usually I try to advise the simplest solution. But in this case it gave me "tunnel vision" which prevented me from realizing what was really the problem.

[xarvn]

@Alex ♡, can you check your "games" folder and determine how many .ico (Icon type) files are located there? The default location of the folder is as follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam\games

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

İlk olarak Iceira tarafından gönderildi:

also sounds like a manual reset of steam icon cache after a old guide with wipe usredata.
only way to get all windows steam desktop shortcut to go Blank, problem is he dont mention he did it. and thats why no one bother with asking did he do this..

what does this even mean

[xarvn]

When you "deleted all of the files" in your Steam folder to reinstall Steam you probably followed outdated instructions such as delete everything except userdata, steamapps, and Steam.exe. This will result in blank shortcuts because the icon cache is stored in "...\Steam\steam\games" which you deleted. Steam tends to populate the cache only when installing games. Follow the instructions in my post #17. This will restore the cache without actually requiring re-installation of all your games.

[Alex ♡]

İlk olarak xarvn tarafından gönderildi:

@Alex ♡, can you check your "games" folder and determine how many .ico (Icon type) files are located there? The default location of the folder is as follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam\games

There's a whole lot of them. For every game I have installed and some that I have uninstalled. There are some missing though. Can't seem to find my BG3 icon, but it's somewhere located in the steam folder because I manually assigned it to the shortcut after getting so sick of looking at the white file pages.

[xarvn]

İlk olarak Alex ♡ tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak xarvn tarafından gönderildi:

@Alex ♡, can you check your "games" folder and determine how many .ico (Icon type) files are located there? The default location of the folder is as follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam\games

There's a whole lot of them. For every game I have installed and some that I have uninstalled. There are some missing though. Can't seem to find my BG3 icon, but it's somewhere located in the steam folder because I manually assigned it to the shortcut after getting so sick of looking at the white file pages.

Try this:

1. Right-click the Windows Start button and in the menu click "Apps and Features"
   
2. In the list to the left, select "Default apps."
   
3. Scroll down the window towards the right and click "Choose default apps by file type"
   
4. In the long list of file types, scroll down to ".URL" and select "Internet Browser"

[Alex ♡]

İlk olarak xarvn tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Alex ♡ tarafından gönderildi:

There's a whole lot of them. For every game I have installed and some that I have uninstalled. There are some missing though. Can't seem to find my BG3 icon, but it's somewhere located in the steam folder because I manually assigned it to the shortcut after getting so sick of looking at the white file pages.

Try this:

1. Right-click the Windows Start button and in the menu click "Apps and Features"
   
2. In the list to the left, select "Default apps."
   
3. Scroll down the window towards the right and click "Choose default apps by file type"
   
4. In the long list of file types, scroll down to ".URL" and select "Internet Browser"

already set to that, checked it yesterday before replying. re-selected it too just to be safe.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

İlk olarak Alex ♡ tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak xarvn tarafından gönderildi:

Try this:

1. Right-click the Windows Start button and in the menu click "Apps and Features"
   
2. In the list to the left, select "Default apps."
   
3. Scroll down the window towards the right and click "Choose default apps by file type"
   
4. In the long list of file types, scroll down to ".URL" and select "Internet Browser"

already set to that, checked it yesterday before replying. re-selected it too just to be safe.

youre lucky you have a .url extension :/ my windows doesnt even have that in the place they're talking about. i even tried downloading the .url extension thing over and over. weird af.

[Alex ♡]

İlk olarak ุ tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Alex ♡ tarafından gönderildi:

already set to that, checked it yesterday before replying. re-selected it too just to be safe.

youre lucky you have a .url extension :/ my windows doesnt even have that in the place they're talking about. i even tried downloading the .url extension thing over and over. weird af.

I think at some point I moved my entire steam folder over from the normal Program Files x86 to a completely other drive that i use ONLY for games & game launchers in order to keep everything organized bc i have 3 drives now, but I have no idea if that's what caused this to happen because I have no way of figuring out when i did that and when my issue originally began.

[xarvn]

OP: When you "deleted all of the files" in your steam folder, what exactly did you delete? Which folders/files did you leave so that you would not have to "remove [your] games?"

[xarvn]

İlk olarak Alex ♡ tarafından gönderildi:

I think at some point I moved my entire steam folder over from the normal Program Files x86 to a completely other drive that i use ONLY for games & game launchers in order to keep everything organized bc i have 3 drives now, but I have no idea if that's what caused this to happen because I have no way of figuring out when i did that and when my issue originally began.

That would explain a lot of the problems you are having and why solutions are not working. I would try reinstalling Steam to your game drive, making sure that Steam is completely uninstalled:

1. Use Steam->Settings->Storage to move any games you have installed in drive C: to your drive for "games & game Launchers" (hereafter referred to as "game drive")
   
2. Exit Steam (Steam->Exit)
   
3. On the "game drive" make a temporary folder such as Temp_Steam
   
4. Move the steamapps, userdata folders to Temp_Steam
   
5. Locate and move the "games" folder to Temp_Steam. This folder is usually located at "...Steam\steam\games."
   
6. Make sure you have your account name, password, and Steam Guard codes/access to email used to set up account.
   
7. Right-click the Windows Start button and select "Apps and Features"
   
8. Find and uninstall Steam
   
9. Go to your drive and be sure that there is no "Steam" folder in your "game drive"
   
10. Go to https://store.steampowered.com and install Steam. Be sure to specify the "game drive" in the installation path. For example if the game drive is Drive G then install in G:\Steam. DO NOT install in another folder shared with other game clients or launchers--install Steam in its own folder in the root of the drive.
    
11. Start Steam
    
12. Log in to account and verify that it is the right one.
    
13. Exit Steam
    
14. Move the "steamapps" and "userdata" into the the Steam folder
    
15. Move the "games" folder in the the "steam" folder (for example: G:\Steam\steam\games)
    
16. Reboot PC