Is there a Fix for TortiseSVN Overlay Icons on Windows

Question

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:

• TortoiseSVN icons overlay not showing after updating to Windows 10
• https://superuser.com/questions/968212/
• TortoiseSVN icons not showing up under Windows 7

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

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