What is the ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers in the windows registry meant to look like if tortise SVN overlays are working correctly?

Question

The answer here:

TortoiseSVN icons not showing up under Windows 7

Suggests that you might need to modify your windows registry to make the overlay icons display correctly.

I've opened that path in regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

And the following displays.

What is meant to be here if tortiseSVN or similar programs have their overlay icons displaying correctly?

Answer 1

You should have 9 Tortoise related subdirectories below ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers as seen here:

I suggest you re-install Tortoise.

Answer 2

Windows 7 does indeed keep a list of overlays in the register key specified above. The argument for eliminating overlays is actually a valid one, i.e. after a while different applications start fighting each other. There really should be a better solution which allows selected folders to have their own, dominant, overlays. But I can accept that the overhead eventually gets ridiculous.

I checked out my own key. Overlays seem to be loaded in collating order, so various vendors are trying to jump line (say by prefixing their key with multiple spaces). Juvenile. I would suggest deciding which overlays are useful then either deleting or renaming the ones that aren't. (I've renamed Dropbox, making it easier to restore if needed.)