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?

Answer 1

They display fine here. Are you using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 along with the 32-bit version of TortoiseSVN? If so, then they will only show up in the 32-bit Explorer (or in the CFDs of 32-bit applications). You can install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions side-by-side, though.

Answer 2

To complete Johannes's answer, you can check this thread, which mentions another cause (the first one being installing the 32bit client instead of the 64 one) (emphasis mine):

Only more recent versions of TSVN and TCVS are able to share overlay icons, and since Explorer has a limit of 14 overlay images in total with extraneous overlay icons simply not showing up you might have too many...

If it's overlay icons are showing up you'd have to actually be using the 32-bit Windows Explorer, which of course means you'll have to also install a 32-bit version of TSVN.

The issue might come up when one install also first TortoiseVCS, because:

Looking at what got installed in the filesystem and the registry, it looks like they tried to do what I do with my Shell extensions - install both 64 and 32 -bit versions, so that nobody says "I don't see my overlays/menus"! ;)

Unfortunately, it looks like the registry entries for 32-bit got hosed, so the 32-bit extension DLL, even though present, does not have the correct registry entries.

If in doubt I suggest to deinstall TCVS and TSVN.
Then install TSVN.
Maybe after installation reboot twice, not only once.
And if they still don't show up go to software control panel and choose to repair the installation. That did the trick for me with when upgrading from the previous to the current version.

You should probably install the TortoiseXYZ variant you plan to use mainly first, to improve its chances to fall into one of those limited number of overlay icons slots before the TortoiseXYZ variant you use less.
Always keep these limited number of overlay icon slots in mind when trying to analyze malfunctions.

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

I found that if you install the 32bit version first it some how mucks up the 64bit version. On reinstalling windows 7 i just installed the 64bit version and it seems to work fine now.

Answer 5

No offence to the other answers but I couldn't understand that I SIMPLY need to go to the registry and delete a couple of registry entries.

Check this guy's solution which describes just that as straightforward as it can be.

Answer 6

I'm having the same "not showing any icon" in Win 7 64bit.

I have installed TortoiseSVN 1.6.6 x64 and it's working perfectly apart of the icon's overlay not showing at all!

I checked the Windows registry and there are all the 8 TortoiseSVN entries. I have no other program installed that uses overlay icons, however

I tried to: - re-install the application many times, - install only 32bit version, - install both 32bit and 64bit version, - check "run as administrator" on every executable SVN file

NOTHING seems to activate these icons, please help me!

Answer 7

If you want to use Tortoise from within a 32 bit Application on Windows 7 64 bit, you need to install both the 64bit and the 32bit versions of Tortoise. According to Tortoise's makers, this works fine. (source)

Answer 8

Same problem for me. It turns out that the cause of the problem was the new JungleDisk 3.0, which rudely installs three overlays named "1Sync..." "2Sync..." and "3Sync..." pushing the Tortoise ones off the end.

Just delete those JungleDisk keys in the reg hive listed at the top (or prefix them with z_) and re-start the system and Tortoise should work fine again.

Given that this overlay limit exists in Windows and is easily hit with current tools, tool vendors really should ask during advanced installation if the user wants to install them. I have no need nor desire for the new "Sync" feature and don't really care for the tactic of stuffing the icons at the top of the list with clever naming. Shame on JungleDisk.

Answer 9

Kris Erickson is right, vote him up. In my case the problem was installing TFS powertools , which adds explorer shell integration just like TSVN and TCVS. It adds another 5 overlays. Since they are prefixed with Tfs*, they take priority over Tortoise*. I also just prefixed the Tfs stuff with z_ and the TSVN overlays came back. No need to reboot/logoff though, just kill explorer.exe and start it again.

Answer 10

I had the same issue as the OP: Win 7 (x64), TortoiseSVN (x64), and DropBox (x86). The info from some of the other answers gave me all the info. I've only ever had the x64 version of TSVN installed on this machine.

In my case TSVN and DropBox were installed the same day I did the OS install and the overlays worked fine until a couple of days ago. I did nothing involving changing settings for either app to cause them to stop working.

Here is what I had in the icon overlay registry section after the problem started (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers):

1. DropboxExt1
2. DropboxExt2
3. DropboxExt3
4. EnhancedStorageShell
5. Offline Files
6. SharingPrivate
7. TortoiseAdded
8. TortoiseConflict
9. TortoiseDeleted
10. TortoiseIgnored
11. TortoiseLocked
12. TortoiseModified
13. TortoiseNormal
14. TortoiseReadOnly
15. TortoiseUnversioned

I verified that only the overlays corresponding to the first 11 entries display in Explorer. When I modified the order of above entries by adding 'z' to the start of some of them, again only the first 11 overlays (under the updated order) would display.

With the above I had everything I needed to solve the problem (either rename or or delete entries so that the TSVN entries I want working are <= #11 on the list). Below deals with wondering why this suddenly happened.

I know that based on the overlays that worked prior to a couple of days ago, keys 1-3, 7-9, 12-13 were all <= 11 in the list (not sure if overlay #14 ever worked since I never had files w/ read-only status. #15 never worked on this machine so i know it was never in the top 11). I also assume the block of TSVN keys move up/down in unison, therefore they were bumped down either two or three places (* see below). This implies that 2-3 items were added between the DropBox & TSVN blocks. The three that are there now are added by Windows and I would assume they'd be there as soon as the OS installed.

Is the list of 15 overlays determined at run-time? Seems like the overlay handlers might sometimes tell the windows shell that there are no icons to add to the list. Possibly some settings I messed with a couple of days ago related to file sharing and file encryption caused some of those items at the 4-6 spots to become "activated" and push the SVN ones down.

In the end I deleted a couple of entries and moved some, so my final list looks like this:

1. DropboxExt1
2. DropboxExt2
3. DropboxExt3
4. SharingPrivate (i want this to show up)
5. TortoiseAdded
6. TortoiseConflict
7. TortoiseDeleted
8. TortoiseModified
9. TortoiseNormal
10. TortoiseReadOnly
11. TortoiseUnversioned
12. zOffline Files (i don't use Sync Center, or "Offline Files" so I don't care about this)
13. zEnhancedStorageShell (don't really know what Enhanced Storage is, don't think I need this)

Answer 11

Also restarting your PC is not needed. Just restart explorer.exe.

Answer 12

Have you tried to change in Tortoise Settings the status cache to 'Default'? I had this problem with the overlay icon on folders because I had this option in 'Shell'. The option is in Settings -> Icons overlay.

Maybe this could help you http://tortoisesvn.net/node/97

Answer 13

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.

Answer 14

After upgrading to TSVN 1.6.8.19260 I had the same issue (no icons in Explorer), but in my case, there were NO entries at all for TSVN under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers. In my original install, I didn't included the additional icon sets, because I never use them (and I've never installed them in any previous upgrades).

I modified my installation, adding the additional icon sets, and my icons have magically reappeared.

Answer 15

I just upgraded to TSVN 1.6.8.19260 on a WinXP and two Win7 machines. After upgrading, the overlay icons disappeared on all 3 machines. Under the above mentioned registry key, I only found the entry for offline files. I simply had to reinstall/repair the TSVN installation and the icons reappeared after a reboot. I've never detected that behaviour in any previous TSVN version and I certainly installed TSVN everytime the same way with the same permissions.

Answer 16

My icons had disappeared too. The registry fixes did not work for me either.

This is how I got them back:

1. install the latest version of TortoiseOverlays
2. restart explorer.exe

Answer 17

I resolved it by using Autoruns from Sysinternals.

Answer 18

Sometimes you just need to go to TortoiseSVN "settings", turn the icons off, click "apply", turn them back on.