This isn't really a visual styles tweak or whatever, but it's got to do with desktop icons, so it's probably the best forum to post the thread in.

Anyway, here is a little picture of what happens.

When the computer boots and whenever the desktop is refreshed, all the icons look like the top one (they have a darker shadow behind the icon labels). But whenever icons are clicked or selected, they look like the bottom one (lighter shadow).

Now, obviously, this isn't a big deal, but it's starting to bug me. It's one of those ones where you just try to find a quick solution and end up tieing yourself in knots trying to find out (you know those ones, right).

Anyway, it's not ClearType, it's not "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" in Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance and so on.

The question is, does anyone know how to solve this little mystery? It doesn't matter whether the shadows are light or dark, as long as it's one or the other the whole time.

Thanks.

It seems the problem is in your graphics card refresh rate. Play around with that.

Try newest drivers / older ones.

My monitor is an LCD (Samsung 740B) so the refresh rate shouldn't make a difference. It's set at 60 Hz (default) but changing it so 75 Hz (only other option) didn't help the problem.



My graphics card is a 7800GT - was using the 84.21 drivers, reverted back to 81.98 which didn't help then uninstalled the nVidia drivers altogether to go back to the normal Windows ones and still had the same problem.

It seems like it's a Windows problem rather than drivers, a setting somewhere isn't quite right.

If anyone is interested, I've finally found the culprit to this annoying problem.

It's the tweak used to remove those arrows from shortcut icons (deleting IsShortcut from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile). Undoing this tweak fixes the problem, but now the arrows have returned (it's better this way though). Now, to find another way of getting rid of the arrows.

you can get TweakUI and remove the 'arrows' from desktop shortcut....matter of fact you can do lots of things with it...also there are some options under system properties/Advance/Performance/Settings tab and chose Visual Effects Tabs...that add shadows to menus,show transluent selection rectangle/animate windows and etc....also under appearance/advance and effects...and remember that are colors for 'active' and 'non-active' icons when you click on them.