×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

SW Icons Disappear

SW Icons Disappear

SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
Hi all,

I have a 64 bit dell workstation, running 32 bit SW2008 SP4.0. Ever since i installed SW the icons next to file names in windows explorer just show the generic pic like ther is no program associated with them. In the type column it know that they are SW documents, but the image would be nice to have. I just updated to SP4.0 hoping it would fix, after the installation some of the icon pics came back, but after system reboot all back to blank. Any thoughts? thanks in advance!

Tony

RE: SW Icons Disappear

I have the same problem.  It happened to all our machines (about six) at the same time about two years ago.  Ever since, every PC we ever put SW on won't show the icons.  I think it's something our IS dept. did with either security or group policy or something.
 

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Have you tried toggling the option at Tools > Options > System Options > General > Show thumbnail graphics in Windows Explorer ?

cheers

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
hmmm....cany say that anyone here did any group policy updating. And its only my machine that has this problem.

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Are you using a certified graphics card and driver?

cheers

RE: SW Icons Disappear

While we are indeed using the certified card/driver combo, I fail to see how a certified graphics card could affect this.  Neither the the standard part/dwg/assy icons nor the preview graphic display in windows explorer.

Yeah, we tried toggling the thumbnail thing a few times.

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
yes i have a certified graphics driver. and when i do the show thumbnail in windows explorer, it does nothing. inside SW when i open a file it shows the thumbnail image. it must have something to do with x64 windows, and x32 SW as everyone else here has x32 windows and SW and no problems.

i read that is an installation was modified or repaired it would casue the icons to go away, but supposedly sp3.0 fixed that isse. No such luck.

RE: SW Icons Disappear


Wouldn't you see a performance benefit by installing the 64-bit version of SolidWorks and also remove the OS/App differences which seems to be giving you the problem?

Trevor Clarke. (R & D) Scientific Instruments.Somerset. UK

SW2007x64 SP3.0 Pentium P4 3.6Ghz, 4Gb Ram ATI FireGL V7100 Driver: 8.323.0.0
SW2007x32 SP4.0 Pentium P4 3.6Ghz, 2Gb Ram NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 Driver: 6.14.10.7756
 

RE: SW Icons Disappear

handleman ... just grasping at straws. If it's only the SW files which are affected, I thought just maybe it's a SW graphics ponder umm thingy.

cheers

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
you would think i would see a performance improvement, but not really at all. as a matter of fact stability just flat out sucks on 64 bit SW.

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Mitsu50

I wonder if that's a 2008 thing or maybe Vista. I've been using SW2007 x64 3.0 with XP Pro SP2 x64 for eighteen months, it's so much faster than our 32 bit seat and hardly ever crashes (since I sorted the videao card)!

Trevor Clarke. (R & D) Scientific Instruments.Somerset. UK

SW2007x64 SP3.0 Pentium P4 3.6Ghz, 4Gb Ram ATI FireGL V7100 Driver: 8.323.0.0
SW2007x32 SP4.0 Pentium P4 3.6Ghz, 2Gb Ram NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 Driver: 6.14.10.7756
 

RE: SW Icons Disappear

I have seen this happen with other programs on the pc interfere with the icon files. You may have another CAD program or other graphic application loaded? Sometimes you may have to manually search for the icon path to change it or reload the program.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 06/08
ctopher's home (updated Apr 30, 2008)

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
SincoTC,

i am also running win xp pro x64. i've found x64 SW 2008 to be completely unstable, at least for this workstation, PDM crashes, edrawings within PDM crashes, extremely slow start up as well.

ctopher
SW is the only CAD package i have, other than 3ds max which was installed recently but this icon problem started even b4 that install.

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Mitsu50,

You can try to right click one of the SW files and go to properties.  Where it says "Open With" change that to SolidWorks.  That should fix it.

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Strange, I'm using X64 with 64-bit SolidWorks and haven't had any problems so far...
FWIW, SolidWorks '08 is slow to start up whether it's 32-bit or 64-bit.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP, Certified DriveWorks AE
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
bsj0526, I dd that and no luck. Windows recognizes the files as SW documents, but with no icon associated

JMirisola, yes startup for me was unbearibly slow, thats why i went back to 32bit SW

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Hello, I had this problem, and it was caused by a beta install of 2008, back in October 2007.

The problem was sldwinshellextu.dll.
 
When I had SW 2008 Pre-Release installed it loaded a newer version of sldwinshellextu.dll into:
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\SolidWorks Shared".
 
I renamed the 2008 version to "sldwinshellextu.dll.back", and then re-registered the correct version of the *.dll, which was in the default SolidWorks 2007 installation directory.

Everything was OK after that, and I have since purged SW 2007 from my system.

Your mileage may vary...

Mike
 

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
well 2007 version is long gone from my system, so i cant try that. but i did install the beta of 2008 a while back lie you did, perhaps that is the problem? to bad i cant get that file back

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Mitsu50,

Did you try and re-register "sldwinshellextu.dll" using the Regsvr32 command?

It (sldwinshellextu.dll) should exist in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\SolidWorks Shared".

mike




 

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
no but i'll try it in the morning when i ge to work! Thanks

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
well i did the regsvr32 command, and no luck. :( even tried rebooting after. The only thing i can think of is it might have something to do with the fact that i'm running a 32 bit version of SW in a 64 bit OS???? Who knows.....

RE: SW Icons Disappear

I have had this issue of icons for Solidworks changing to the defaults after working correctly.  I found a 'fix' in the registry in:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SldAssem.Document\shellex\IconHandler
-Same for SldDraw.Document & SldPart.Document keys.
Removing the handler keys has been working for me.
Note: a 'DefaultIcon' key should exist for each of the three file types.  Any time you upgrade or repair the installation these would need to be removed again.  I made a .reg file to do this (attached). I have seen no adverse effects from this reg mod, but back up your reg file first, and use at your own risk.

RE: SW Icons Disappear

Thanks, jg!  This has been an issue on our machines for several years!  

The correct icons almost look out of place now...

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

RE: SW Icons Disappear

(OP)
WOW!!!! This is great, finally. Thanks so much.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources