My Pictures and My Music folders are displayed with the standard folder icon

Symptom

When you open Windows Explorer or the My Documents folder, one or both of the Special folders ( My Pictures and My Music ) are displayed with the standard folder icon rather than the special icons. This behavior can occur when the desktop.ini file in the special folder is missing or it has incorrect entries.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, use the following method:

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type:

rundll32 mydocs.dll,PerUserInit

2. Click OK.

[ The command line parameter is case-sensitive, and the command has no return value. The user will not notified if the command has successfully executed or not ]

This command also restores the missing My Documents shortcut in the Send To menu.


More Information

The Desktop.ini file is a text file that allows you to specify how a file system folder will be viewed. The IconFile and IconIndex values in the Desktop.ini file determines the folder icons. The above command reinitializes the My Documents, My Pictures and My Music folders (per-user basis) and recreates the Desktop.ini file in these special folders.

In addition to customizing the folder icons, the Desktop.ini file allows much more customizations for folders.