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I recently discovered that Windows 7 is displaying a Windows XP style monitor icon when I view the properties window for the computer (e.g. Control Panel - System and Security - System). See the screenshot below.
Why has this happened? Is there a way to correct it? I know how to change icons in Windows but I just don't know if I will be able to change this one. It doesn't do any damage (not that I'm aware of anyway) so it should be harmless. But it is quite annoying. I certainly don't expect this from a modern operating system in year 2014, not being able to handle a simple thing like icons...
Update:
I was using the new Windows 7 computer remotely from an old Windows Vista computer. That's why I was seeing that. When I log on to the Windows 7 locally it shows the correct icon/image.
I also have another Windows 7 computer and when I log on to that one remotely from the Vista it does exactly the same thing. So the problem is not specific to the new computer, this happens every time I log in remotely using RDP (mstsc.exe).
But isn't that odd? The computers are all on my LAN and I have all the bells and whistles selected in mstsc.exe when I connect. I checked the display options (in mstsc.exe) and it's set to 32-bit color depth. The performance (network bandwidth) is also set to highest.
Yet I still see the outdated, old school icon in the control panel of the remote computer, as if it's in some weird 16-bit or 256 color mode? This doesn't make sense at all. Is it a bug? Or just the usual way of doing business at Microsoft? Or maybe both?... I don't see why it should be doing this if I specifically set the color depth to 32-bit.
I see that the Aero Glass effects are gone as well when logged in remotely. As if the remote computer switches to generic Microsoft graphics driver when connected to remotely?!? While this doesn't do any damage it's certainly annoying that Windows misbehaves like this, and not having a unified user experience. Some features are missing when you don't have the Aero enabled, which may or may not effect productivity (e.g. Aero Peek). Windows should not operate in this reduced feature set, as if using Windows in safe mode.
The sfc /scanfile=%systemroot%\branding\shellbrd\shellbrd.dll
command returns "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations" on the Windows 7 computer.
I haven't tried connecting remotely from a Windows 7 computer to a Windows 7 computer. I don't expect to see a different behavior, but I could be wrong, because I believe Windows 7 has a more recent version of the Remote Desktop client than that of Vista.
Update 2:
Yup! As I suspected! It has to do with compatibility between Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows Vista Ultimate computers. See my answer below.
I will assume that my precious Windows has got influenza and is now sick?... I better prepare for the worst. I've been there and seen all sorts of funny things happen to the Windows interface when a computer gets infected. Even though it's not very likely, as this is a desktop computer, it's behind a firewall and I only did a clean install last month. But you can never know what kind of surprises Windows has for you in store. – Samir – 2014-02-02T15:35:38.800
1The old monitor image is used when you have a 256-color resolution. The actual image is usually stored in the
C:\Windows\Branding\ShellBrd\shellbrd.dll
file. Maybe the file is corrupted, or Windows is not detecting the screen resolution properly for some reason; try resetting it, just in case. – and31415 – 2014-02-02T17:01:22.1602@and31415 gave a good answer, but just to elaborate: I would recommend running
sfc.exe
from the command line to make sure. Probably best to do it for all files,sfc /scannow
, but you could just scan that file,sfc /scanfile="C:\Windows\Branding\ShellBrd\shellbrd.dll"
. – dgo – 2014-02-03T00:45:31.1231The color depth should be at 32-bit, but what I haven't told you is that I was using Remote Desktop. I didn't think it was relevant. See the update. The two computers do however have different resolutions. But that should not be an issue? Well, at least I now know it's not a virus. – Samir – 2014-02-03T21:16:57.777