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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 '11 at 7:08
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Ah! I just had to refresh that setting! Thanks a ton! – user74757 Nov 11 '11 at 7:09
Feel free to add that as an answer, and I'll accept it. – user74757 Nov 11 '11 at 7:10
but ??? how come killing the explorer or rebooting didnt fix it? could it be the icon cache needed a refresh? – Psycogeek Nov 11 '11 at 7:25
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It's not a bug, it's a feature! – m0skit0 Nov 11 '11 at 7:50
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The web says that happens if the icon is scaled Up or down. MS technet discussion

Some thing similar were fixed by using the "show desktop" or right-click Refresh on the desktop, both of which refresh the desktop.

Pbergonzi said to do this --> Right-click Desktop->View->Change Large icons to Medium icons or Small icons. In windows 7
Cnet forum discussion

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