Windows 11 23H2 - Folder icon gets a black background

[rainman74]

As of Windows 11 23H2 (10.0.22631.2361), Icaros thumbnailing affects the creation of folder icons. The folder icon often gets a black background.

[rainman74]

New bug: First folder icon is small

[Xanashi]

I'm currently testing this, I'll get back to you soon. In the meantime please note that Windows is in charge of generating folder thumbnails in Explorer, so there is a chance that this is a Windows bug.

Does the black background and small icons disappear when you refresh the Explorer window? (F5) Does the black background only happen when Icaros is enabled?

[clsid2]

The KB5030310 update is very buggy, with many (Explorer) issues. So this issue is unlikely related to Icaros.

Turning off Copilot may reduce issues: https://www.neowin.net/guides/how-to-turn-off-or-remove-windows-copilot-on-windows-11/

[Xanashi]

Thanks clsid2, that is really good to know. I'm currently updating my VM, and will try to reproduce these issues.

[rainman74]

Does the black background and small icons disappear when you refresh the Explorer window? (F5) No, it remains.

Does the black background only happen when Icaros is enabled? Yes, without Icaros the problem does not occur.

I also deactivated Copilot and that did not bring any improvement.

[Xanashi]

So far I haven't been able to reproduce this issue with the latest version of Windows 11.

Is there anything else you could tell me about your setup?

Any other shell extensions installed? Any File Explorer modifications installed? What filetypes does these folders contain?

[rainman74]

So far I haven't been able to reproduce this issue with the latest version of Windows 11.

Is there anything else you could tell me about your setup?

Any other shell extensions installed? Any File Explorer modifications installed? What filetypes does these folders contain?

Did you install KB5027397 Enablement Package for Windows 11 23H2 22631?

No, I do not use any other shell extensions or File Explorer modifications.

I will document the contents in the folder the next time it occurs.

[rainman74]

@Xanashi I have now checked what contents are in the folders where the problem exists, but could not find a cause. Even if there is only one video file in the folder, or 50 files (pictures and videos), the black background appears.

However, there must be at least one file in the folder for which the thumbnail is generated by Icaros. If I restart Explorer via Task Manager, all folder icons are immediately correct again with tumbnails. It must be something that is created when the folder icons are generated, but not immediately when Explorer is restarted. Maybe a memory leak when generating the icons in the new Windows Explorer app (from Win11 10.0.22631.2361) itself.

Here is only one mkv file in the folder:

In the first folder are several jpgs and in the other folders are several mkv files and jpgs:

[Xanashi]

Hi rainman74,

Sorry for the slow reply. I've been trying to update my VM so Win 11 23H2, but it doesn't seem to work. I'll get back to you once I've gotten it to work and properly tested File Explorer in the latest release. I do hope that it's a Windows bug that MS will fix, since their update seems to have introduced it.

[Xanashi]

Hi rainman74,

So I managed to successfully create a VM with Win 11 23H2 (25967.1010). I haven't been able to reproduce the issues you describe above, but while trying to install the 23H2 I did end up on the Canary channel which is further along than 22631, so maybe MS has already corrected these issues in the later versions.

[rainman74]

@Xanashi So, even with the final version of Win 23H2 the problem is not solved. I therefore rule out Windows itself, as otherwise everything runs super stable and the thumbnails are all generated correctly again when I close Icaros.

At the moment I have to switch Icaros off and on again and again so that the thumbnails are generated correctly. But this is not a permanent solution.

Question: I therefore only wanted to use Icaros for the properties and no longer for the thumbnails. But if I switch off the thumbnails and only activate the properties, then I get (e.g. MP4 and MKV). Both settings only seem to work together, which is a pity.

[Xanashi]

The version of Win11 you're testing on is still behind the one I tested on (25967.1010). So there could still be a difference there, but it could also be something else, like system/registry permissions issues. It can be very difficult to debug without being able to reproduce the issue.

Thumbnails and properties are handled 100% separately. The two shell extensions does not affect each other. The Property Handler does not affect thumbnailing. If you don't get thumbnails after disabling the Thumbnail Provider in Icaros, try using the "Reset thumbnail filetypes" on the Tools page in IcarosConfig.

[rainman74]

The version of Win11 you're testing on is still behind the one I tested on (25967.1010). So there could still be a difference there, but it could also be something else, like system/registry permissions issues. It can be very difficult to debug without being able to reproduce the issue.

Thumbnails and properties are handled 100% separately. The two shell extensions does not affect each other. The Property Handler does not affect thumbnailing. If you don't get thumbnails after disabling the Thumbnail Provider in Icaros, try using the "Reset thumbnail filetypes" on the Tools page in IcarosConfig.

The version of Win 11 you are using will not be released for about 6 months. And it's no use just testing it for a few minutes, you have to look at it in daily use.

Second: For some reason, the property handler interferes with the creation of standard thumbnails. Even if I restore the file types, it doesn't help and neither the standard thumbnails for MP4 nor MKV, etc. are generated.

Even if I reinstall Windows 11 and do not use any other shell extension apart from Icaros.

As soon as I deactivate the property handler, the standard thumbnails are generated immediately.

Unfortunately, Icaros does not generate an error log, so I can't send you anything to narrow down the errors.

In addition: I have not installed Icaros on C:... but on D:\Apps\Icaros. Could this possibly be a problem?

[rainman74]

Here is the proof via debug (The Explorer was restarted after each change):

1. Property Handler ON / with Icaros - Thumbnails are working ✅:

2. Property Handler ON / with Explorer - No Thumbnails ❌:

3. Property Handler OFF / with Explorer - Thumbnails are working ✅: Hint: The display "Property Thumbnail Handler" seems to be wrong here, because the Icaros properties are definitely off and are also not displayed in Explorer.

4. Property Handler OFF / with Icaros - Thumbnails are working ✅:

[rainman74]

@Xanashi Out of desperation I have now simply installed Icaros from the package "Shark007 Codecs 18.1.6", and lo and behold, the thumbnail errors have not occurred since then. I have seen that all DLLs from this package are newer than those from "Icaros 3.3.1 Final", at least in terms of timestamps.

I'll keep an eye on it, maybe I'm lucky and it was due to the older DLLs, or maybe I rejoiced too soon.

Update: Too early, problem is still there :-(

[Xanashi]

Ok, I see what's going on here. At least with the MKV/MP4 issue.

The "Property Thumbnail Handler" is Microsofts native property handler for a lot of video files. I suspect MS uses the property handler to generate thumbnails for MKV and MP4 files as well, and as a result these files will stop generating thumbnails when the property handler is changed.

Unfortunately, using a property handler for both properties and thumbnails comes with a significant drawback, that is if you want to use another property handler for these filetypes, native thumbnailing also stops working for them.

You can still use the Icaros Property Handler, but you would have disable these filetypes to keep the native thumbnailer running.

I wish I could figure out a way to fix the invalid rendering of the folder thumbnails, but it's a tough issue to debug. Even if I managed to reproduce the problem (which I haven't been able to yet), the actual folder thumbnail generation is still done by MS and not by Icaros. So if Icaros is involved, I need to guess why the thumbnails from Icaros specifically, makes MS generate wrong folder thumbnails. I'll see if I can find version 22631.2506 of Win11 to test on.

(Editted some assumptions, I had misremembered some things)

[rainman74]

I wish I could figure out a way to fix the invalid rendering of the folder thumbnails, but it's a tough issue to debug. Even if I managed to reproduce the problem (which I haven't been able to yet), the actual folder thumbnail generation is still done by MS and not by Icaros. So if Icaros is involved, I need to guess why the thumbnails from Icaros specifically, makes MS generate wrong folder thumbnails. I'll see if I can find version 22631.2506 of Win11 to test on.

En-Us x64 Home, Pro, Pro Educ., Pro for Work., Educ., Multi Session, Ent. 22631.2787 Multi-ISO: https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/ZBzosrJC#file

[clsid2]

Isn't it just a single Microsoft DLL that handles both property and thumbnail interfaces? Because it would be weird if the thumbnail shellex registry keys would be ignored based on propertyhandler settings.

The black background bug in likely something related to transparency handling in Windows. A lot of GUI stuff in Windows uses hardware accelerated rendering through graphics driver. You should test if the problem also occurs if you temporarily change the graphics driver to Microsoft Basic Display Adapter.

[Xanashi]

@clsid2 I complete agree that it is weird that a thumbnail provider should have any dependency on a property handler, however as you can see in rainman74's example above, the thumbnailing for some filetypes stops working as soon as the native MS property handler is disabled/overwritten.

I'm honestly not sure why this is, but maybe MS is using the native property handler to extract the thumbnail into the ThumbnailStream property, and then fetch that with their thumbnail provider? This is of course just a guess.

Good call on the hardware accelerated rendering. This could definitely be a factor.

[Xanashi]

I wish I could figure out a way to fix the invalid rendering of the folder thumbnails, but it's a tough issue to debug. Even if I managed to reproduce the problem (which I haven't been able to yet), the actual folder thumbnail generation is still done by MS and not by Icaros. So if Icaros is involved, I need to guess why the thumbnails from Icaros specifically, makes MS generate wrong folder thumbnails. I'll see if I can find version 22631.2506 of Win11 to test on.

En-Us x64 Home, Pro, Pro Educ., Pro for Work., Educ., Multi Session, Ent. 22631.2787 Multi-ISO: https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/ZBzosrJC#file

Thank you!

[rainman74]

@Xanashi any news here? Problem still exists in Windows 11 23H2 (10.0.22631.3447)

[Xanashi]

No news yet, but I will be testing this one soon. I've had some issues with testing things on VMs, but now that I've moved to a new machine, it should hopefully not be an issue anymore.