Get the black and white 7zip filetype icons back

7-zipicons

I've been using 7-zip for a long time. Any archive that 7-zip recognizes was given a black and white [7z] icon. I just switched from Win7 32 bit to Win7 64 bit, and when I reinstalled 7-zip all of the recognized archives have different icons. They look like folders with a small blue text character on it. I don't like these at all. For me they are easy to confuse with folders and other stuff. The black and white icons from before were very easily distinguishable from other file types and I liked that.

I figured this was due to a newer version of 7-zip so I reinstalled an older version that I've had stored for a long time but the icons still haven't reverted back to the black and white ones that I am used to.

I did find a utility called File Types Manager that can change the icons for specific file types, but it seems as though that still only lets me change the icon for a single file extension at a time (and as of now 7-zip is associated with 35 extensions) rather than on a per-application basis.

I'd like to get the other black and white icons back. Can anybody help me with this?

Best Answer

If you're sure the older version used the icons you liked, you can try rebuilding Windows' icon cache.

Alternately, you can reinstall the latest version (preferable) and use something like the 7-Zip Theme Manager to easily change the icons and much more besides, instead of manually editing the DLLs using Resource Hacker or similar:

I'm sure there are some themes in there with icons you'd like, and perhaps even themes that include the older icons. If not, you can always try creating your own theme using the icons extracted from the older version of the program's DLL.

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Windows – How to change Windows 7 zip icon

Thank you mpy, you directed me to a forum with useful information. Rebuilding the icon cache did not do the trick. But that website also had registry settings to restore the default settings for file types: default-file-type-associations

So i found out that *.zip file type is a little bit special and has settings in:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.zip]

All i had to do was completely remove this key and all its subkeys. Then i had to re-login again, and the zip file icon was finally fixed:

file types fixed

Windows – prevent the change of overlay icons

What I did, since Dropbox is really becoming annoying, is I created a ".reg" file that removes all those Dropbox entries:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt01]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt02]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt03]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt04]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt05]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt06]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt07]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt08]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt09]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\   DropboxExt10]

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regedit -s FixDropboxTortoiseSVNConflict.reg

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

start explorer.exe

And TortoiseSVN shows icon overlays again.

Not the most beautiful way of doing things, and may require changing the registry keys above when Dropbox changes them in the future again, but removes some manual work of going to the registry and rename/delete them, one by one :)

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