TortoiseSVN icons not showing up under Windows 7

Question

I can't seem to get the icons to display under Windows 7 and I really miss this from Windows XP.

How can it be fixed?

Solution 1

Windows can only show a limited number of Overlay Icons (15 total, 11 after what Windows uses). Programs like Office Groove, Dropbox, Mozy, Carbonite, etc, will hijack a bunch of the 11 possible overlay icons (boy would it be nice if Microsoft upped the number of these as the number of applications that use them seem to increase and increase)...

You can see what overlays are set up, and change them (at your own risk) in the registry here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

If you are using TortoiseCVS (and have nothing else using overlay icons), you will get a couple of TortoiseSVN Icons, and all of your TortoiseCVS icons. This is because the overlay icons are used in alphabetical order. Again, at your own risk (editing the registry may blow up your computer, yada, yada, yada -- and if you are reading Stack Overflow and using Windows and haven't edited the registry, you are a rare beast indeed), feel free to rename them (I suggest putting numbers in front of the ones you want to use and "z_"'s prefixed to the ones you don't need). The TortoiseSVN Shell extensions are nicely named so you know what they do, the TortoiseCVS extensions are not. After looking through the source code, I found the pertinent information:

• TortoiseCVS0 - In CVS
• TortoiseCVS1 - Not in CVS
• TortoiseCVS3 - Conflicted
• TortoiseCVS4 - In CVS readonly
• TortoiseCVS5 - Ignored
• TortoiseCVS6 - Added
• TortoiseCVS7 - Deleted
• TortoiseCVS8 - Locked

Solution 2

Halt ye!

Before doing anything to your registry or similar procedures listed in Kris Erickson's (excellent) answer or the ones below, there's something to consider...

Are you on a network drive?

If so, go to Tortoise SVN settings (right click any folder > TortoiseSVN > Settings), then go to 'Icon Overlays'

Make sure you've checked 'Network Drives' as pictured:

By default on a fresh Tortoise install, network drives don't have the icons added.

This solved the problem for us. If this fails for you then obviously you can go through the (slightly) more involved solutions listed here.

Solution 3

Also restarting your PC is not needed. Instead restart explorer.exe:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
2. Click the Processes tab.
3. Right-click on explorer.exe.
4. Select End Process.
5. Click End Process button.
6. Click the Applications tab.
7. Right-click.
8. Click New Task (Run).
9. Set Open to: explorer
10. Click OK.

Windows Explorer has restarted and the TortoiseSVN icons reappear.

Solution 4

I, too, lost my overlays after upgrading to 1.6.8 on Windows 7 x64. I only installed the x64 version and not the 32-bit version. To fix, I ran a repair with the original installer and rebooted. The overlays displayed normally thereafter.

Solution 5

I resolved it by using Autoruns from Sysinternals.

1. Run Autoruns
2. In the 'Explorer' tab, scroll down to the 'OverlayIconIdentifier' and 'ShellOverlayIconIdentifier' entries
3. Un-tick unwanted overlays (such as most of any Dropbox, SkyDrive etc.)
4. Restart Explorer.exe

View more solutions

Comments

[Andy]

Same for me - I've seen no issues with TortoiseSVN on Windows 7. I'm using 32-bit versions of both, however.

[Lodle]

That could be why, will have to download the 64bit version and see

[Chris Staley]

This was the answer for me. I had Mozy and DropBox installed and simply prefixed each of their entries under the "ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers" key with "z_". I logged off and then back on, and the Tortise overlay icons reappeared. I'm using the 64-bit version of both Win7 and TortiseSVN.

[Paul Stovell]

This was the answer for me as well, I had installed Gladinet, which along with Carbonite had taken up my icons.

[craigmoliver]

awesome! worked for me! I popped a "z" in front of the DropBox related icons, restarted, and boom, there they are.

[usr]

That was the solution for me. I just deleted some unused overlays like offline files.

[sebagomez]

dude! 1+ , I had noticed it happened when I installed Office 2010 and reported it (with no luck of course). Thanks.

[Leigh Riffel]

Restarting or logging out is not necessary, simply end and run explorer.exe.

[bitFlipper]

From the TortoiseSVN lead developer (2010-04-17): "You might have to do a repair install (start the installer again, then choose 'repair') after you've updated to 1.6.8. Otherwise the overlay icons might not show up properly. Sorry for the inconvenience."

[Álvaro González]

If repair install does not work, just follow this cycle as many times as required: 1) Uninstall 2) Reboot 3) Install 4) Reboot

[Asaf]

had garbled values in the registry, but run through my installed programs, just to find Microsoft's Live Uploader. removed, rebooted and viola! thanks alot

[Marcos Placona]

You rocked my world. that fixed this annoying problem. Might use useful to stop the TSVNCache service after you do it so the icons load correctly

[Eric J.]

I just installed TortoiseSVN fresh, and it's putting numbers in front of the registry entries now.

[Dmitry Selitskiy]

Looks like Tortoise implemented this workaround out of the box: its identifiers are prefixed with numbers. However, I still don't see them (while I do see Dropbox's icons...)

[Felipe Alvarez]

I have 32 & 64 bit TortoiseSVN installed on Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. I get the folder icons, but not the file icons. All the registry entries have been prepended with "z_" except for the 9 TortoiseSVN ones.

[hotshot309]

Definitely try this before any regedits. When doing a repair on TortoiseSVN 1.7.1, you won't need to reboot if you let it shut down apps before repairing. I had a new Windows 7 32-bit system and installed TortoiseSVN 1.7.1 on it after installing Subclipse 1.8.2. (Maybe the order of installation caused the problem, because a coworker did the reverse and had no issues.) The TortoiseSVN icons didn't show up on any source-controlled folders, except when I put them into the Recycle Bin (what the...?). Doing a repair just once fixed it.

[Tim MB]

+1 This worked for me even though it was only some projects that weren't displaying icons (and hence I assumed, not an issue with Explorer's limited number of overlays).

[Jaspio]

Did you have some project on non-fixed drives? TortoiseOverlays adds the icons for Network Drives and the like too.

[davidfrancis]

For some reason I had changed my status cache to None - changing it back to default brought the icons back. I also did the registry hack beforehand and prefixed the Groove entries with "z", but the status cache change was needed before my icons came back.

[ssmsnet]

Turning Cache to off and applying then turning back to default fixes it every time for me.

[yagni]

Beware: explorer seems to load the overlays in ASCII order, but the registry editor displays them in some other (slightly different) order. Use Process Monitor to verify the order the registry keys are accessed when starting explorer.exe.

[Chris R. Donnelly]

I just had this happen to me and it looks like TortoiseSVN started an arms race: Microsoft Skydrive icons start with a space(!): " Skydrive1", Box.com icons start with "000", Avast! names its overlay "00Avast", etc.

[missingcat92]

I've tried every answer up there, but none of them works. Then I downloaded autoruns and did some setting, the icon finally show! Thank you a lot!

[Pino]

Tortoise implemented this workaround out of the box: its identifiers are prefixed with numbers. If you have no other program using names prefixed with numbers (or spaces) and you still don't see overlays, try the solution proposed by spoulson (see below). It works with various versions of Tortoise.

[WMIF]

I have my SVN in a Win7 Fusion VM on a Mac and the repository is in the host documents folder through the Fusion sharing options. This solved my icons not showing.

[Michael Sobczak]

For me, TortoiseOverlays 1.0.15 worked with Tortoise SVN TortoiseSVN-1.7.11.23600, but not TortoiseSVN-1.8.1.24570 I spent an hour and a half installing/uninstalling the different Tortoise SVN clients figuring that out. Hopefully, I can save someone else the lost time.

[Martin Hennings]

Great! A TrueCrypt volume seems to be handled as a network drive.

[Walden Leverich]

As others have pointed out Tortoise now adds numbers to bounce their overlays to the top. However at least SkyDrive and Adobe Creative Cloud add spaces to the start of their key names bouncing them to the top of the list. Hard to see in regedit, so keep that in mind.

[omatai]

Informative answer, but... before trying this, try starting and stopping explorer.exe as suggested below by JohanKirsh. Having only just migrated to Win7 and downloaded the latest TortoiseSVN release, this alone was sufficient to reinstate the overlay icons for me.

[icc97]

I had the same problem with Windows 8.1 and Tortoise SVN 1.8.1. Updating from TSVN 1.8.1 to 1.8.4 didn't help, I still had the problem. Once 1.8.4 was installed, re-running the installer and choosing the Repair option fixed my issue

[jwg]

+1 Try this before even thinking about touching the registry.

[Walter Stabosz]

Killing and restarting explorer.exe is cumbersome (it's slow to restart, and it doesn't restart all the child processes that you also killed). Try killing TSVNCache.exe instead, then refreshing your Windows Explorer window by pressing F5 to see if the icons return.

[evilspoons]

Right-clicking the taskbar and clicking 'Task Manager' will ALSO bring up the Task Manager.

[CAD bloke]

The 15 overlays limit is still in Windows 8.1. :/

[chjarder]

you can also do it from command prompt: 1. taskkill /f -im explorer.exe 2. start explorer.exe

[vidhyadhar]

i had a similar problem killing TSVNCache.exe helped me in resolving. Please do not do anything with windows registry.

[TechSavvySam]

similar to WMIF fixed my issue when using an OS X drive from Parallels

[Frelling]

As davido said "beats opening up regedit" Autoruns quickly lets you enable/disable overlays. Once SkyDrive overlays were disabled, Tortoise Git/SVN showed all the familiar overlays again. I furthermore used it to disable a few other overlays (e.g. DropDox) that didn't find necessary.

[ravemir]

I thought "upgrade" was a strange term for SVN, should've known it meant something other than version control. Thanks for #2: its a really good point that the metadata could change on big gaps between versions.

[Steam]

@LeighRiffel - End process did not work for me. Btw, if someone wants to try your approach, here are the steps. Run taskmgr.exe or task manager > processes tab > select explorer.exe > kill. Then click file option > new task > enter explorer.exe > ok.

[Norman Cousineau]

I had to select 'Upgrade Working Copy' at the root of my working copy (after upgrading from v 1.6 to 1.8). And changed the registry as per comment above. And I did a repair on 1.8.

[BadHorsie]

Dropbox also tries to force its icons to the top of the registry priority by enclosing them in quotes like "DropboxExt1"

[Jim Oldfield]

You can do this gracefully. Open the start menu and then hold ctrl+shift while right clicking on it; "exit explorer" will appear as an option. You'll still need to open up task manager (e.g. using ctrl+alt+delete) to restart it though! This is on Windows 7; on Windows 8 I think you can still do it by ctrl+shift+right click on the task bar.

[Baz Guvenkaya]

Scroll down and check my answer guys it worked like a charm for more than 22 different computers. stackoverflow.com/questions/1057734/…

[Jose]

As always SO gives me the answer I need. Kudos!!

[Valamas]

this worked great for me. but drop box placed itself back in front after a couple of weeks. So i had to reapply this answer. starred for future.

[Karan Kaw]

GIT Tortoise or SVN Tortoise Icon Overlay Settings need to get actiavted once we do installation of Tortoise setup. So, by re-starting Explorer, We give it a chance to run.

[jacobsee]

Tried this on Win7 x64 with TSVN 1.9.2 and the installer will not let me install the 32-bit version.

[Steinfeld]

just rename it and push a bunch of whitespaces infront + restart explorer and you are done.

[Soumya Kanti]

Is the same limitation of 15 overlay icons in Windows 10 as well?

[Makesh]

After installation of skype and MS one Drive, this issue started and I noticed both created many entries in the registry. Thanks for the answer.

[codah]

In Windows 10 there is a "Restart" option for Windows Explorer in Task Manager. Worked instantaneously for me.

[Ed-AITpro]

had to uninstall Dropbox and then stop and restart explorer. bye bye Dropbox.

[aalazz]

My problem was that, for some reason, TSVNCache.exe was not running. I simply launched it and the overlay icons reappeared.

[Cyntech]

Dropbox has changed their naming scheme again, to force them to the top, by adding 3 spaces at the start of the names.

[Henrique de Sousa]

I also need TortoiseCVS and tried to install TortoiseSVN.. didn't work either.

[JMA]

This solution worked for me too. It seems that explorer needed to be restarted after installation of TortoiseSVN in order for explorer to show the icon overlays.

[qwertoyo]

My forecast for 2019-2020, based on the current trend and personal research, is that Dropbox will be using 8 to 11 spaces.

[ToolmakerSteve]

No, as soon as you re-install dropbox, its overlays will take precedence if they are alphabetically-earlier. (As I write this, dropbox has THREE SPACES in front of each overlay name, so that they will win out over any "competing" overlay app that has fewer than 3 spaces starting each name.) Personally I solved this by adding more spaces in front of the SVN icons I use (via RegEdit). This will work until some update of Dropbox adds even more spaces. Insanity...

[ToolmakerSteve]

This is not a good solution. Changing Status cache to Shell means you aren't seeing recursive icons. For example, if you add or change a file, you will see a different icon on that file (and maybe on the folder that directly contains that file, I don't remember), but won't see a change icon on a higher-level folder. Instead, you will see "up-to-date" icons on those higher-level folders, even though, somewhere down below, it is not up-to-date! [Tested just now on TortoiseSVN 1.9.6 running on Windows 10 64-bit]

[ToolmakerSteve]

.. or people could log out of windows and log back in, which is a quick and easy way to be sure Windows is using recent changes.

[ToolmakerSteve]

This solution is unnecessarily complicated. (Though nice to know.) Just sign out of windows and sign back in. Should only take a few seconds, and is easy to remember. Its a middle ground between (slow) Reboot, and doing multiple steps like this answer :)

[ToolmakerSteve]

@LeighRiffel - a good point, but it isn't necessary to do something "unusual" like kill explorer. [Though you are correct that that is all that is needed for this situation, so is good for people to know.] What I recommend: Sign out of Windows, then sign back in. Quick, easy to remember, and is a more broadly useful technique, as it resets more than just explorer.

[MC Emperor]

It's ridiculous that Microsoft set a (non-adjustable) limitation on the number of overlay icons. With Dropbox and TortoiseGit installed, I prefer the selection and order of icons this blog post mentions.

[MickyD]

This is a much nicer, more elegant solution

[CGFoX]

It's 2020, and I still have to manually remove the Dropbox overlays (with now 3 leading spaces) every couple of weeks to see my SVN icon overlays...