Barbara -

When you connect to a web site, they may provide an icon that will show in the address bar, and may also show on a link that you save (i.e. in "Favorites" in IE). Unfortunately, these icons go into your Temporary Internet or Cookies folders, which are subject to constant updating and cleaning. The result is that often the icon gets lost, or gets "unlinked" from the "Favorite" listing, and the IE icon replaces it.

The same thing often happens if you save a link on your "desktop." The original icon will eventually "get lost" and a generic icon will replace it.

If you really want those icons, it is usually possible to dig them out of the temp file(s) and save them permanently, and then "reassociate" the link/file/shortcut with the "permanent" icon. The procedure isn't too complicated, except for identifying the various icon fragments you need; but I haven't saved any notes on it because doing this for each individual link seemed like more trouble than I was interested in.

I find it more convenient, in fact, to always have the IE default icon on everything IE to separate the "web instance" from the "Word instance" etc., often with similar names, on the bottom bar when I'm doing my frequent "extract to other format" browsing. I don't use the desktop for saving anything other than my program links (no temp stuff there - too many icons would cover up my pretty lady desktop).

Most comments I've seen on this have been "sidebar" notes in PC magazines, so tracking down the ones I remember would likely be harder than just "casting at random." I'll keep an eye open for the procedure, but can't promise a quick result.

John