Word, Excel, Access icons all morphed into a common generic icon. Why?

A new 64-bit workstation running Windows 7 at first had the usual icons for MS Office 2010 Word, Excel, Access, and Outlook. The icons on the taskbar for Word, Excel, and Access almost immediately morphed into the same generic icon. The generic icon doesn't show the program name so I need to hoover each icon to see which program it represents. The same generic icon appears in the START menu just for Word, Excel, and Access.The Outlook icon remained normal on both the taskbar and in the Start menu. All other components of the MS Office Suite 2010, which weren't yet on the taskbar, have normal icons in the Start menu. I don't want to pin them to the taskbar now, as I'm afraid they'll all morph too!

 

This happened the day the workstation was installed and I attributed it to changes I made to the desktop wallpaper and screensaver. I doodled around and got the normal icons back, only to have the generic icon reappear a week later. And this time, I wasn't working at all with the desktop wallpaper or screensaver.

 

Any idea what causes this? 

Answer
Answer

A reboot didn't fix the problem. But something else did. I tried the 'Uninstall or change a program' option in Control Panel:  Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features, then right clicked on "Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010", clicked Change, then chose the Repair option. It took about 10 minutes of system activity and then a reboot. The taskbar icons were still incorrect, but the icons via the Start button were now normal. So I unpinned the incorrect icons, and re-pinned all programs from within the Start menu. The icons are all normal again...yipeeee! Don't know if this will be a permanent fix, but hoping.

Also, though this workstation is connected to a network, the software is loaded on the hard drive of this workstation, so I'm not sure a network disconnect caused or contributed to the issue initially. Will see what happens now.  Thanks much for your feedback...appreciate the forums.

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Question Info

Last updated September 25, 2018 Views 1,892 Applies to: