I posted this in the Microsoft Windows 8 forum and was directed to post here instead. We did look for answers before posting, but our specific issue is different than what others have had regarding "blank icons." After updating our workstations to Windows 8, icons located on a network drive (e.g., in the "W:\ICONS" folder, where drive W is mapped to a shared folder on a server) are displayed as a blank document-- a solid white rectangle with the upper right corner folded down. However, icons located on the workstations' local C drives are displayed correctly-- and if we copy the icons from the server to the workstation they display correctly. If we go to the shortcut properties and click "change icon," the correct location on the mapped network drive is already listed and the desired icon is already displayed and selected in the window, but re-selecting the icon and applying the change does nothing-- the desktop shortcut still displays with a "blank document" icon. We've tried the suggested solution of turning off Windows Explorer, deleting the local icon cache, and rebooting to force Windows to rebuild the icon cache, but it doesn't help either. The desktop shortcuts work just fine, they are just not displayed with the desired icons. By the way, the servers are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (if that matters).

I suggest you run sfc/scannow command and it will repair the system files automatically when its have problem with it. Details of sfc/scannow command is scans integrity of all protected system files and repairs files with problems when possible.Run sfc /? command to know more options of sfc command. Regards, Ravikumar P

Logon the Windows 2008 R2 server, check if the shortcut icons display correctly on it? As Ravikumar suggested, run sfc /scannow on the server as well.