TortoiseGit not showing icon overlays

I have been using TortoiseGit for almost a full year now. It has been working very well for me until yesterday, when I encountered a problem. I was deleting a folder when Windows Explorer sort of crashed on me (it hung on "discovering items") for over an hour, then I restarted the system.

Since that time (and I am not sure if the incident described has anything to do with it), TortoiseGit has stopped showing icon overlays in explorer. The behaviour is, however, not like any of the others who posted questions here, because:

In the open file dialogue of all programs, the icons still exist (!).

Here is a list of things I tried:

I changed TortoiseGit settings to show different icons.
Reinstall TortoiseGit (uninstall, restart, install, restart).
I deleted all icon overlays starting with "Tortoise" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer \ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers, then uninstalled TortoiseGit, restarted the computer and reinstalled TortoiseGit.

Edit:

I tried to create a new user on my computer, and the new user has icon overlays working just fine. I am now even more confused.

Nothing helped so far. Any ideas?

Solution 1:

I had the same problem and I got it to work by following instructions from a forum. What I did was this (copied):

I find solution :) Wrapping with "" all tortoise keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

on 1TortoiseNormal and etc... I understood the problem, seeing as Dropbox and it worked regedit there was the sign ("") to Dropbox but not tortoise. So I added the signs, close explorer.exe and hop it was good :)

So what I did was rename the key 1TortoiseNormal to "1TortoiseNormal" etc. I have no idea why wrapping it inside a double quote makes it work again.

The original forum is gone, but a good summary is supplied in the comments.

Solution 2:

Windows will only allow up to 11 icon overlay identifiers, arranged in alphanumeric order - if there are more than 11, these icons will not be displayed.

You can run the following command in a DOS prompt:

regedit /e c:\icons.txt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

Then open the file C:\icons.txt. Skip the first two lines, and if 1TortoiseNormal and the other *Tortoise* values are not in the top 11 values, their icon overlays will not be shown. The solution provided by @Chi Chan is just a simple way to make 1TortoiseNormal rank higher when ordered among all the overlays, you can also rename the values by adding space(s) before 1TortoiseNormal, i.e.,

" 1TortoiseNormal"

to make them rank higher.

update: for Windows 8, the limit of icon overlays is 15.

Solution 3:

Windows 10 Solution Steps;

Open regedit

Path :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

Remove/delete all SkyDrive/OneDrive keys. You may need to take ownership of the keys one by one and give your user full control if you receive an error while trying to delete the keys.
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc and restart "Windows Explorer" (Optionally restart computer)
All git/svn overlay icons are now visible !

Solution 4:

Before going nuts, just try rebooting! It worked for me ;)

Solution 5:

Just add one Space(or more if needed) to first Name of Tortoise options to this regedit addersses:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

for example:

"1TortoiseNormal"

Should change to:

" 1TortoiseNormal"

after a system reboot icons shows currectly.