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Recently, my hand slipped on my mouse/keyboard and I accidentally increased the icon size. After resetting it and fixing them, I noticed these incredibly annoying small gray outlines around only certain desktop icons.

I have one third party program called 'Desktop Restore' that I use to save and restore icon layouts, but I have no reason to believe that it should have anything to do with it.

My question is: Is this something in Windows 7? If so, what is it there for and how can I turn it off?

Killing explorer.exe and restarting it doesn't fix the problem, not even rebooting...

The gray squares of death...

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  • the web says that happens if the icon is scaled Up or down. pbergonzi said to do this --> Right-click Desktop->View->Change Large icons to Medium icons or Small icons.
    – Psycogeek
    Nov 11, 2011 at 7:08
  • 1
    Ah! I just had to refresh that setting! Thanks a ton!
    – cemulate
    Nov 11, 2011 at 7:09
  • but ??? how come killing the explorer or rebooting didnt fix it? could it be the icon cache needed a refresh?
    – Psycogeek
    Nov 11, 2011 at 7:25
  • 11.11.2011 !!!! Nov 11, 2011 at 7:30
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    It's not a bug, it's a feature!
    – m0skit0
    Nov 11, 2011 at 7:50

4 Answers 4

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The MS technet says that happens if the icon is scaled up or down.

Similar issues were fixed by refreshing the desktop by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing "show desktop" or "refresh"

If you have Windows 7, Pbergonzi from Cnet suggests:

Right-click Desktop → View → Change Large icons to Medium icons or Small icons.

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Just Right-click Desktop->View->Change Large icons to Medium icons or Small icons then refresh the desktop and you are done.

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  • How does this answer the OP's question " I noticed these incredibly annoying small gray outlines around only certain desktop icons... Is this something in Windows 7? If so, what is it there for and how can I turn it off?" He already stated that he fixed the icon size after increasing them.
    – MaQleod
    Oct 6, 2012 at 3:43
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Click desktop, then Ctrl + Mouse Wheel.

This is how most people (accidentally) get the box in the first place.

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Actually this problem occures when some of icon "producers" do not care to include 256x256 version of it into the *.ICO file so if you (ctrl+mousewheel) exceeds 128x128 ico version that gray outline will appear in your intended "oversization" :-D

ORIGINAL

But there is kind of problem to add extras into *.ICO file by "nonpaid" means... I found ICOFX 3 and used just trial for 30 days (I think that is enough time to modify a few icon files :-D) ---There you just open *.ICO file -go to "Image" -choose "Add New Image" -add the missing size (ussualy only those 256x256 are missing) -save it -you will probably will have to "reload" ICO file in shorcut properties.

ICOFX 3

---Some icons you will have to Extract from files the ICOFX giving you this option on first page when you run it, then add what is necessary and save it into ICO file and reload it in shorcut properties.

---PS: I would recomend to save modified ICO files as a new file rather than the old one, It should save a bit of your time.

---PS: you may play quite a lot with programs tools, but I was ok just with "Sharpen" Effect :-)

MODIFIED

Thats it... Now just get rid of these shield-stupidities xD

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