file in other than the root directory location and altered naming schemes of the web site's design.
Now we know the cache of favorite icons for all the websites we have ever visited would universally be stored in the tempoary internet file folder, then if you set the cache so that nothing ever expired and the size was set so large that nothing was ever over written, then the icons would work the way we think they are supposed to. They don't. Ok, so that does not work, another mystery of the microsoft. We can a least clean up the appearance of this programing foepaw by creating a permanite directory without downloading what could be a difficult to remove spyware program to do it for us that continiously sucks up computer cycles and bandwidth without your knowledge or permission.
Now assuming you have already made these type of internet shortcuts and have observed this icon disappearing act personally for yourself, then you will have already made the shortcuts you will need later in the instructions. In this example I am using the Google Search Engine's website shorcut, perhaps surf to Google and create a shortcut on your desktop and follow along with me if you have not done so already by draging the icon on the Internet Explorer address bar onto your desktop or another sutible location.
Create a new folder as a location for this permanite icon directory. For example in My Documents create a new folder called My Icons.
When connected to the internet using Internet Explorer type or paste the base URL of a website into the address bar, then the slash, plus the favicon.ico file name.
The URL will then look something like this... http://www.google.com/favicon.ico then click 'Go' or press 'Enter'. The icon (if present on the website) then appears displayed on the web page, which is actually just the graphic. If the icon does not display on the web page display area or you receive a '404 file not found' error by the web site server then probally the icon does not exist or else you have further software issues that you could try resolving by trying to force client side delivery or using other technique to o the requested file. * - see Force Icon note. As you can see in this case the graphic is a square with a capitol 'G' in it for the favorie icon for the Google web site.
Now right click on the favorite icon graphic in the web page display area, not the icon on the address bar, and select 'Save Picture As...', when the 'Save As..' Dialog Box opens then browse to the folder you created earlier or create it now. Then in the file name dialog box you will want to rename the file. For example change favicon.ico to google.ico if that is the case, it is here. Finally click 'Save'. It is best to rename them as you go, so that you do not have to remember what they all are, besides you can not have several files all named favicon.ico all in the same folder. I guess you could create a nested folder situation but that is just more work and there is really no reason to do that unless you have some future project in mind.
Now you will probally have to move Internet Explorer out of the way and go find that old shortcut with the broken icon dangling there. In the case it would be the Google Search Engine website Shortcut on the desktop. 'Right click' on the shortcut, and then select 'Properties' and then click on the Dialog Tab that says 'Web Documents" and then the 'Change Icon' button about halfway down the dialog window. When the 'Change Icon' dialog window opens click on the 'Browse' button at the bottom left and browse to the location of you newly created permanite icon folder. Mine was C:/My Documents/My Icons/ and then select the google.ico file and then click the 'Open' button. 'Ok' on the dialog, then 'Apply' then 'OK", or just 'OK' for a delayed effect.
Now if you want drag the shortcut down onto the quick launch bar, that's now the quickest way to Google.
Rinse, ring, and repeat with your other broken icon shortcuts. That looks better! Now if you have a bunch of other internet shortcuts saved up in your favorites folder in internet explorer and you want the favorite icons to always stay permanite then open Winwos Explorer and browse to your IE favorites folder C:\WINDOWS\Favorites and the same process will work. This takes a lot of time if youhave a lot of favorite shortcuts and try to do them all at once, so remember just to fix the ones you want to look right as you surf and not worry about the spyware that will do the same thing without selling your soul.
Take a look in your tempoary internet folder and see how many favorite icons you presently have cached, it could save you some time if you already have a bunch of icons already cached. Copy the icon(s) from this folder to your permanite icon folder and rename them appropriatly.
