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Sometime today the TortiseSVN overlay icons disappeared on my Windows 10 PC. A quick google search shows many, many, many instances of this occuring over the past few years from Windows 7 up to recent Windows 10.

By and large the suggestions fall into two groups. Various manipulations that don't work any more and manually hacking the registery with RegEdit to delete some other icons. In addition there are many examples of this issue for Tortisehg and TortiseGit.

So we are on the same page, these are the Tortise and Windows version giving me grief today. It is high time we found a way to FIX this problem instead of having to muck-about in inside the registery. Uninstalling TortiseSVN and re-installing doesn't work for me.

That in itself points to there being a fundemental problem imho. If TortiseSVN was working Monday, and not working if I install it on Wednesday -- The icon management underlying the tool appears to be fautly.

Anyway, I'm hoping someone wiser can suggest or point us to a tool or script or patch that will actually Resolve the issue.
The problem is exaccerbated by windows because it makes OneDrive some kind of protected species and I can't move or rename these icons (at least not yet).

TortiseSVN

  • TortoiseSVN-1.9.5.27581-x64-svn-1.9.5.msi

Windows 10

  • Version 10.0.14393

related:

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will
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  • I gave up long time ago worrying about this. – Uwe Keim Jan 11 '17 at 06:48
  • BTW: The **Cleanup** command has [a checkbox to refresh the Shell overlays](http://i.imgur.com/1nkmEMg.png). – Uwe Keim Jan 11 '17 at 06:49
  • We often (with older Windows versions) see the icon overlays go out of date (e.g., showing red bubbles after everything has been committed). To reinforce what Uwe said above, I find the Cleanup command reconciles those differences. Maybe it'll bring back your icons. But I'll add this: DON'T RELY ON THEM! They're inaccurate far too often. – NoelC Jan 11 '17 at 12:46
  • Possible duplicate of [TortoiseSVN icons not showing up under Windows 7](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1057734/tortoisesvn-icons-not-showing-up-under-windows-7) – magicandre1981 Jan 11 '17 at 15:52
  • I asked my my Microsoft contacts and they have no plans to increase the ugly 15 limit, they even want to kill the overlay icons completely. so delete/rename entry you don't care. – magicandre1981 Jan 11 '17 at 15:54
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    @UweKeim, yes and that is always my first action -- It no longer works with my Windows 10. I have completely reinstalled TortiseSVN, no good. – will Jan 12 '17 at 10:17
  • @magicandre1981 -- Can Not be a duplicate because Tortise say that the Windows 7 & 8 icon problem is `fixed` with TortiseSVN 1.9. Also, it is recent. Monday or Tuesday's Windows update ... grrr. (I cite that question in the text actually). – will Jan 12 '17 at 10:20
  • it is a DUP, because you both hit the ugly 15 overlay limit of Windows! – magicandre1981 Jan 12 '17 at 16:11
  • @magicandre1981 -- That's somewhat arbitrary, in fact the question is about a Fix, the question for Windows 7 is looking for any kind of workaround. From the conversation there and here the answers are hacks. I'm looking for a tool or some kind of patch code update -- May be no one has invented something yet ... That doesn't negate the expressed intention. – will Jan 13 '17 at 03:07
  • there IS NO patch for this, no matter how often users ask this. Submit it in feedback hub and hope it gets enough upvotes so that MS fixes it in a newer Win10 build – magicandre1981 Jan 13 '17 at 15:32
  • here is some background: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775227.aspx, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb761389%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#Image_Overlays and here you see the 15 overlay limit is a ImageList limitation in windows – magicandre1981 Jan 14 '17 at 07:17
  • I prefer a can do attitude -- a fix is possible, unfortunately seems there is not much interest in creating one. – will Jan 16 '17 at 22:38
  • I gave it up. submit it via feedback hub, share this link (facebook twitter) to get a lot of people to vote on it. – magicandre1981 Jan 17 '17 at 16:28

4 Answers4

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It is high time we found a way to FIX this problem instead of having to muck-about in inside the registery.

What is attempted in my take for this problem was to automate the registry manipulation; uses the hack everyone seems to be using (prepending spaces before overlay entries) and even offers to restart Windows Explorer afterwards:

  1. Go to TortoiseSVN-FixIconOverlays[RunAsAdministrator].cmd
  2. Save the file
  3. Run as administrator (as hinted)
  4. Allow the tool to restart Windows Explorer for changes to be effective immediately

Uninstalling TortiseSVN and re-installing doesn't work for me.

This only solves some forms of registry corruption, not what's already being suggested in other comments: that the most common cause for such problem is the overlay limit being hit.

Bonus: it should be fairly straight-forward to modify the tool for similar usages: for example, making sure GoogleDrive icons are always visible.

Bonus 2: the script (referred in step 1) actually searches for the broader term "Tortoise", so it can be used out-of-the-box to repair other TortoiseOverlays-based software such as TortoiseGit, TortoiseHg, TortoiseBzr or TortoiseCVS.

Helder Magalhães
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  • It was a great solution, it seems that is common for problems to appear in the registry – break7533 Jan 30 '17 at 11:41
  • Great!! That worked for me. Thanks!! It solve the SVN icons, but now, dropbox icons does not work, :o – Daniel Silva Aug 02 '17 at 13:19
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    @DanielSilva: that's because there **is** a limit! ;-) As stated in item 2 of linked script "references": [Windows can only show a limited number of Overlay Icons (15 total, 11 after what Windows uses)](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1228918/1111895) – Helder Magalhães Aug 02 '17 at 14:44
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All the methods I could find using Google, did not work, but I fixed it using this method:

Open Regeditand go to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

This is where all overlay icons are defined, and it also defines the order they are applied. The problem is that Windows only uses the first 11 of them (Windows allots 15 overlay icon handlers, but Windows reserves 4, so effectively only 11 overlay icons are used), and Dropbox uses 10 of them. They add 3 leading spaces to the names of the Dropbox items to make sure they come first.

Now simply add 4 leading spaces to the Tortoise icons you would like to come first.

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    The addition of a leading space to Tortoise icons helped me get rid of the issue. It is really a pity that Windows 10 OS has this restriction. – Harsha J K Nov 12 '18 at 10:08
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I am not using Windows 10 nor having icon conflicts, so this may not apply to this specific question. It apply to other general tortoiseSVN icon glitches. Before you launch your regedit, you can try changing icon set to another one and then go for a relaunch. If you are good, then you don't have to manually update the registry your self. enter image description here

It may not 100% apply to your case, but no harm in trying.

Paris Qian Sen
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    Nope that didn't work. It was one of the first things I tried. However it is Windows 10 that is broken not SVN. The same thing happens on One Drive, on Box, etc lots of things that would like overlays to work correctly. I only care about SVN the other things are handy but not absolutely essential. – will Aug 22 '17 at 06:54
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    This worked for me. Set to Win10, then restart. Icons appeared in explorer. – DaBozUK Aug 19 '20 at 09:29
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In case you have Dropbox on this workstation, one of the recent Dropbox updates break TortoiseSVN's overlay icons. Read https://stackoverflow.com/a/41740663/761095 and http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=4061&dsMessageId=3199988

To solve the problem, remove Dropbox or read the FAQ and adjust Windows Registry to enable TortoiseSVN overlay icons.

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