Question

That is a problem with the default browser setting that hasn't worked properly.

You can try to redo the default browser (temporarily make another browser the default) and/or check the registry keys in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to see if the specify the correct icon.
In Windows XP you can also do this via the Control Panel > Folder Options > File Types.

Tried that already with Google and IE to no avail. just started this after 17.0 update.

cor-els suggestions didn't work for me, either.

I'm not one of those people who is prone to a knee-jerk "I'm done with Firefox!" response, but given that this is about the 6th such issue I've had pop up in the last several months, I think it's time to finally try another browser. Every time Firefox updates there's some unpleasant surprise. That used to be the exception, but unfortunately it seems to have become the rule.

Ditto here:

XP-SP3 FF v17

After install of FF v17, all new shortcuts dragged to desktop render as generic windows icon, not FF.

Back to FF 16 at the moment, but meant to mention that when I was still using 17 I tried Safe Mode (add-ons disabled) to see if that solved the problem, but it didn't.

Further details about this problem:

• New behavior in FF17
• 'Generic' shortcuts no longer use icons that are compatible with windows 7 adjustable scaling.
• Not only are the icons fixed-size, the generic firefox icon used when there is no favicon appears to be a 16x16px upscaled icon.
• Standard-sized favicons are centered inside a white square

In the attached image, observe two newly-created shortcuts (one to a site with a custom favicon, one to a site without) next to a shortcut created using firefox 16.

This change is a step backwards. Having no option to make my shortcuts all be recognizable as internet shortcuts (by looking the same) is bad. But fixed-size icons? Really? Those should have been deprecated for the windows releases since 2007.

Same problem here, spent numerous hours to find a solution to no avail. Extremely annoying.

Firefox tells me I'm on the RELEASE update channel, but this is quite obviously a beta (if not even alpha) version with completely untested "features". If someone knows any way to get rid of this nonsense behavior (config setting to use default icon for desktop shortcuts?) please let us know.

I found that if I use the deskCut extension, which adds desktop shortcut creation to the context-menu, the resulting shortcut still has a Firefox icon even though dragging doesn't any more. While this extension is very handy and also supplies a *temporary* workaround, I mention it primarily as a potential diagnostic, as the fact remains that the strange and annoying FF17 bug discussed here needs to be fixed.

Great tip Rick216 - thank you! A good interim solution that works fine on my xp system.

Dragging the Site Identity Button creates a HTML file with the source code of the page that you see and such a file gets the icon for such an HTML file .
Using the deskcut extension creates an internet shortcut that links to the website's address and thus gets a different icon associated with a .url file extension.

Cor-el,

Please see my previous attached image. I'm afraid it just doesn't match what you're saying. All three pictured shortcuts are of type "Internet Shortcut (.URL)" - none larger than 300 bytes. None are HTML doctypes. All were created via the same process - dragging the site identity button to the desktop.

Furthermore, saving a page off to an HTML file (page only vs complete doesn't matter) produces a file with the 'old' proper icon (the rightmost in my example of three). It does not produce the new behavior that we are complaining about.

Deskcut does provide a temporary workaround. It also creates a shortcut file of type "Internet Shortcut (.URL)" - the same as dragging the identity button - but with the proper icon.

I've verified all claims I've made while running FF in safe mode and am confident that dragging from the left side of the url bar produces a shortcut, not an html file, just as it always has. The contents of these files all begin with "[InternetShortcut]" if viewed in ascii mode. They are not html files.

Cor-el: Maybe I'm not following, but if dragging the Site Identity Button creates an HTML file with the source code of the page, then why do the properties for ALL of my Firefox desktop shortcuts show 4KB (size on disk) and filetype "internet shortcut?" This is true for both FF 16 and 17, regardless of whether the shortcut shows the Firefox icon or generic Windows, and also regardless of whether it was created via deskCut or dragging.

EDIT: I now see that tofof had just made some of the same points, plus more. My actual shortcut sizes (not size on disk) are all in the same range tofof cites.

The new Internet shortcut created with FF17 is IMHO an attempt to support Windows 8 "Metro". Let's compare the structure of the ".url" created by FF17 and shortcut created with IE9 with extension ".website". Both contain more information than just URL line (different from old .url) The new .url from FF17 should create current website icon on the Win8 Start screen. However, this is not supported for .url type in older Windows and it creates empty icon on XP and favicon in a square on Vista and Win7. There would be some regedit hacking necessary to fix it. Maybe there is something in FF config to revert the behaviour, but I found nothing.

Riotar is 100% right, and I can't believe I didn't see it when I was opening them in ascii mode earlier.

The new shortcut files contain:
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.google.com/
IDList=
HotKey=0
IconFile=C:\Users\Tofof\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ycnnz065.default\shortcutCache\C05L23CXJzZZGJUBfx_Mdw==.ico
*IconIndex=0

Whereas the old ones were simply:
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.google.com/

Obviously, the icon being set to the icons in new shortcutCache folder (which didn't exist on my system prior to ff17) is the culprit.

EDIT:
In the same vein, preventing that folder from being created results in the default 'broken' icon (plain white page on win7) being used, as the browser does no verification that the path it writes into the shortcut is ever actually valid. Strike one for a quick workaround.

From changelog for FF17, it's related to the following. Devs are not mentioning a way to disable the behaviour if anyone do not want to use it.

Bug 110894 - Use favicons on webpage shortcuts in Windows https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110894

Bug 753021 - Favicon shortcuts should be centered with a white background https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=753021

On WinXP the .ico files in the "shortcutCache" show up as the default icon in windows explorer (file manager) and paint. But they look fine in paint.net or GIMP. Perhaps these newer icons Firefox generates aren't in the format XP expects?

What tofof and cyxceven were pointing out here conforms to what I wrote already in an earlier post to another thread dealing with the same issue: [The appearance of my website shortcuts on my desktop has changed]

"[Restoring a backup image] does NOT solve the problem at all. As soon as you reinstall FF 17 you'll end up ate the same point.

When creating a desktop shortcut FF now tries to use the favicon of the site and to save a copy under ...\<your_profile>\shortcutCache\... creating an INVALID .ico file that Windows XP cannot read.

Try to open any of these shortcuts' properties, click on "Change Icon" and you'll get an error message saying ...\shortcutCache\<random_file_name>.ico does not contain any icons."

You can also verify this by looking in the named folder, seeing that XP isn't able to generate previews of the .ico files FF17 stores there just at the time you are creating an internet shortcut by dragging a link to your desktop.

I've read the reports that riotar linked to above as well and couldn't find any way to disable this "feature" either ... so if cor-el (alas, neither his first post nor his second approach were related to the actual problematic behavior of FF17 when creating drag&drop desktop shortcuts, like some of you have mentioned before) or someone else gets hold of a config setting to use the default icon for desktop shortcuts, it'd be really cool to share it with us! (y)

Also thanks @ Rick216 for the workaround, but I'm afraid Mozilla might use this – and the fact that even XP SP3 might no longer be supported by FF in the not too distant future – as an opportunity to rather sit out the problem. AFAIC I'm back on FF16 again (also due to some other bugs concerning the incompatibility of FF17 with TMP) and everything's fine now, except for the drawback of security gaps until these issues hopefully will get resolved.

__

That's about what I thought I had posted at work but apparently forgot to send after preview, so I had to collect the remains from my mental cache.

cyxceven is correct: the shortcutCache folder contains the ICO files, created by Firefox, that Windows XP can't understand. I opened one in an image editor (IrfanView in my case), and immediately re-saved it, overwriting the original. The new version of the icon then appeared in the folder (white square with small favicon in the middle). The corresponding URL shortcut on the desktop soon followed suit.

The second time I tried this however, the Windows icon cache prevented the desktop icon from updating, so I forced a rebuild of that, after which the desktop icon displayed as intended.

That's a bit of a convoluted workaround, so I think I might try Rick216's method using the DeskCut extension.

Hopefully the developers can get Firefox to create icon files that Windows XP can understand, perhaps in addition to the new format?

On a side note, I'm not convinced by the new white square format. I can appreciate the desire to get away from the pixelated enlarged favicons, but a blank white square just looks unfinished - even rounded edges and some kind of outline would help.

"cyxceven is correct: the shortcutCache folder contains the ICO files, created by Firefox, that Windows XP can't understand."

... is what I already confirmed and elaborated above.

"Hopefully the developers can get Firefox to create icon files that Windows XP can understand, perhaps in addition to the new format?"

They would just have to use the standard format of .ico files that any Windows version can decode. I agree with you on the white border format, but enlarged icons like MSIE creates for desktop shortcuts would just do. Apparently they're resizing the favicons by using some resampling method which looks ok to me.

Firefox 17.0.1 has just been released, I can't see this bug being addressed in the overview list of changes and known issues, plus the link to the verbose release notes – at this moment – is dead. This version is also not listed on the release notes index page: [Mozilla Firefox Release Notes]

What's going on there?

FFmurphy - agreed, you had also confirmed this, so to some extent I was stating the obvious.

To be honest I was also fine with the enlarged, pixelated favicons - I just accepted that that's what they were.

Another thing I noticed with the new icons is that they only seem to contain a single 48x48 image (I used IcoFX Portable to open one that I hadn't already re-saved to ascertain this), so even if they are re-saved to display correctly, if the shortcuts are viewed in a folder set to a small icon viewing mode, the 16x16 favicon in the middle reduces down into what is effectively a 6x6 pixel square - not very useful. The old icons would fill the available 16x16 pixel space.

I guess they won't be supporting XP much longer, but this ought to be quite a simple fix for the developers in any case.

Interesting observation about the single image content, thanks for the info.

Officially, XP SP2 and SP3 are still supported, but ... you know ;)

There is a workaround for this flaw: I've written a little script, which can be fed with a single or with multiple shortcuts or folders by drag & drop. It repairs any shortcut, created by "Mozilla Firefox 17".

Usage:

1. Download the file "Restore_Shortcuts.vbs.txt" from http://download.eb-zuerich.ch/mozilla-support/
2. Rename it to "Restore_Shortcuts.vbs"
3. Drag & drop any shortcut(s) or folder(s) onto the script.

The script will only affect these flawed shortcuts. So you can mix any kind of files and folders without hesitation.

I just registered to add my voice: This "feature" is really annoying!

I realize that this is not recommended, but I downgraded to version 16.0.2 and I have disabled automatic updates: no more updates for me until I get the chance to choose the old shortcut icons.

I also have to say that I find not exactly polite this tendency to force the user's hand with regard to the user interface. The same thing happened to the "tabs.onTop." I'm not a conservative, but I think users should have the freedom to choose between the "new trends" and "old habits". And this is especially true, I think, with regard to less experienced users (eg the elderly) that facing these new behaviors of their PC are quite disoriented.

Thanks EBID - I would like to confirm that your script helps, and I like the fact that it involves just one simple extra drag and drop.

For me it sometimes results in a Firefox document icon instead of the favicon (which exists), but I suspect that's a Windows/favicon format issue, or just my system, rather than your script (the same thing happens with the DeskCuts add-in, and previously with Firefox, pre-17.0).

Not a big problem for me, just reporting back...

@rtm51: You are right. Storing a local copy of a website's icon in desktop shortcuts is still an issue. Neither Firefox, nor Opera, Safari, Chrome etc. do save those icons on your computer. Only Internet Explorer does.

You may change your default web browser an also change the icon of your desktop shortcuts this way. Messing round with this mechanism (URL protocol handler) by storing shortcut icons may break the way it usually works. That's why I just wanted to be compatible with Firefox and the rest of the non-Microsoftian world and therefore didn't emulate the behaviour of Internet Explorer.

Fix using regedit:

add String values IsShortcut and NeverShowExt to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL

https://support.cdn.mozilla.net/media/uploads/images/2012-12-05-14-50-22-c38084.png

and change Progid value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.URL\UserChoice to FirefoxURL

https://support.cdn.mozilla.net/media/uploads/images/2012-12-05-14-50-42-c68f6c.png

If you want to change visible Properties (right click on icon) and Tooltip (mouse over the icon) of the shortcut, add String values

FullDetails

and

InfoTip

to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL

with value

prop:System.Link.TargetUrl;System.Rating;System.Link.Description;System.Link.Comment

I have a different workaround I built. Using this, you'll just need to right-click the "broken" icon on your desktop and select the new Send To destination. It will repair the icon so the behavior of Firefox is the same as on Vista/Win7.

Simply download the FixFFicon.zip file from here.

Inside is a single .exe file. Move it to your Firefox profile\shortcutCache folder.

Next, right-click the FixFFicon.exe file and "Create Shortcut"

Then find your Windows "SendTo" folder (Help available here ) and add the new shortcut you just created to it.

Now, when you drag and drop a URL from Firefox and get the ugly default Windows icon, just right-click the icon and select FixFFicon from the Send To menu. Then, presto-chango, the icons look the same as they do in Win7. Which, IMHO, is still ugly, but it's better than default icons.

Note: on 1st execution this will extract 2 additional files to the shortcutCache folder (an image file and the image conversion utility). No other files are installed, no registry changes, or changes made to any other folder. The utility will perform image conversions on the Firefox favicons in the shortcutCache folder. No other files anywhere are modified. To remove, delete the 2 FixFFicon files and the nconvert.exe file from the shortcutCache folder, and delete the Send To shortcut from the SendTo folder. No other traces will be present.

IE will uase icons that the web page provides, say for my bank so I have a symbol of the bank and can easily tell the shortcuts apart, Firefox does not seem to use these icons. Any way around this?

For tinnickels......

I can't find my Firefox profile\shortcutCache that you refer to.

I'm running XP Pro SP3 and have "Show Hidden Files and Folders" enabled.

I did a C drive search for "shortcut cache" and "shortcutCache"; nothing was found.

I'm running FF 16.02.

Please advise what/how to do to locate Firefox profile\shortcutCache -- I'd really like to be able to use your fix and then upgrade to FF 17.01.

Thanks in advance for your time and help !

Until you upgrade to v17, there isn't a shortcutCache folder in your profile. You'll need to upgrade first, then find your profile (usually located here in XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles) and install the fix described above.

Note, you may need to also drag an icon to your desktop to after the upgrade to get the folder to show up. I'm not certain about that.

Is there any way to get Firefox to do what IE does, use icons that I am sure are provided by certain web sites so in IE if I go to the BNZ web site say the icon gains a BNZ symbol which it keeps without any action from me.

ppjamieson - that's exactly what FF v17 does. It uses the favicon icon supplied by the website for the shortcut icon. This works fine in Vista or Win 7, but it chokes in XP, resulting in the default Windows icon, and this thread containing a couple of ways to work around the bug.

Sorry, tinnickels, but I'm not sure to understand what you mean when say that "... This works fine in Vista or Win 7, ...".

If you mean that the new standard behavior of making shortcuts that are white squares with a tiny favicon in the middle, is "working fine", sorry but I beg to disagree.

To me this is a royal PITA and pushed me to rollback to Firefox 16 and block updates, for the time being.

Or you're saying that using your workaround one can transform the new silly metroish shortcuts in something looking better?

Thanks!

My FixFFicon solution only makes Win XP behave like Vista and Win 7. I agree that the tiny favicon icon isn't too attractive, but that was not the problem I claimed to solve. That's a FF "feature". I would suggest you take that up with the Mozilla folks.

Thank you for the clarification, tinnckels, and sorry for misunderstanding.

Yes, I would love to take this issue "up with the Mozilla folks", if I only had the first idea of how to do it...

I think there will be many other that would love, too. Anybody any idea on how to do that?

BTW, I totally agree with ppjamieson about what would be perfect to have: personalized icons "à la IE" and/or a normal default icon, possibly with the plus of it being easly customizable.

Edit., P.S.: Do the registry tricks advised by riotar help in the context of "my issue"?

Edit2: Obviously, if the new square icons have a sense for somebody in a particular context that I'm missing, they should be made available too, even by default, but please, not just plainly "imposed".

for tinnickels.....

Thanks for the reply -- I have FF 17 w/ Vista on another machine and that white box with a tiny icon in the center is almost as bad as having the default Windows icon. Just UGLY.

Is there any real security danger in staying w/ 16.02 until, hopefully, the Mozilla people see how unhappy people are and do a fix? I am behind both a router and software firewall ( Ashampoo Free Firewall ), and run Avira , SuperAntispyware and Malwarebytes Pro w/ the Active Protection Module enabled.

I also don't belong to or go to any so-called social network sites, or any sleazy ones.

Would greatly appreciate your feedback and that from anyone else interested in commenting -- I'm a total security freak --frankly with the stuff I'm reading daily in the Sophos newsletter ( Naked Security ) and The Hacker News, the internet is a very scary place for me. I'm terrified of identity theft , malware, etc.

not working on my Window7 & Firefox latest

I found several places to make suggestions for Firefox. Talk about jumping through hoops. The official Firefox suggestion/feedback site demands that you be running v17! Monkey mentality (don't mean to put monkeys down).

barebear - if you're a "total security freak", then it seems the safety of having the latest browser fixes would outweigh a minor aesthetic issue. The risk of staying at v16 is not likely large, but it's not zero. You'll obviously need to decide what your priorities are for yourself.

ppjamieson - What's not working?

If you're referring to my FixFFicon tool, it was never tested on Win 7 (or Vista) because the problem is only known to exist on XP.

For those of you who would report this icon bug, the URL is:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Use "file a bug" and it will walk you through 3 to 4 fields to fill in. The passwords for this forum did not work for bugzilla but its simple to register.

Cheers :)

Thanks for the info, jigasquid.

I think I will file a bug later today or tomorrw. My only concern is that I wouldn't file a duplicate, so I will check beforehand.

BTW, I see Firefox 18.0 has been released: does anybody knows if something have been fixed with it as far as regards our icon bugs/rants?

Cheers!

Nothing was fixed with the release of 18.0.

This has been already reported in a post for bug 110894

Now there is bug 827784 too and it seems to be more specific.

If you are affected by this bug you can cast your vote for it in Bugzilla.

P.S.: Right now it is filed as an " enhancement" request...  :-/

I went to bug 827784 and tried to vote ( yes I logged in), but I don't think the vote registered --anyhow I left a comment that ! vote to have it fixed

It's encouraging that the Mozilla Bug folks are aware of the icon problem and are working on it. Fairly rare these days.

Yes, now I am distressed also to see the NEW Firefox URLs dragged to the desktop have changed format content and icon visibility. Losing the Firefox icon and now having some kind of generic icon.

Environment: Windows XP Pro SP3, Firefox 10.0.12ESR and Firefox 17.0.2ESR (I have been using ESR for the stability and protection AGAINST mindless GUI changes that have been confounding my users.)

Firefox 10 ESR, and below, (and apparently FF 16 and below) create dragged URLs as:

• [InternetShortcut]
• URL=https://www.myopenid.com/help

The icon came from: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe (I use the bullet list format in order to enforce line breaks in this reply)

Now, the newer (and NOT improved in this regard) Firefox 17 releases do something completely different, changing the way you see/interact with web links. Firefox 17 ESR and Firefox 17, 18 etc. create a different kind of dragged URL link file. Using a link to the same site as my example above, new content is:

• [InternetShortcut]
• URL=https://www.myopenid.com/help
• IDList=
• HotKey=0
• IconFile=C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\x1x974wy.FFesr\shortcutCache\1Hgdh0myZBWgv5UtI+gRQw==.ico
• IconIndex=0

(I changed the username...) (as above I use the bullet list format in order to enforce line breaks in this reply, since the forum post otherwise gets changed into one long string with no line breaks)

And the icon is coming from: %SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll

Possibly because there are not any found icons where it is now pointing to from the new-style internal link, thus forcing it to ignore the Firefox.exe traditional icons.

Another pointless change from the mind of Mozilla.

Please provide a working fix. I see from some comment above that it is possible that it may actually be receiving a work fix allotment, which would be encouraging if it comes to pass. FYI, I am on 17.0.2 ESR and the dragged url behavior is the bad new generic icon and more html content style.

I also see from a comment above that it may be exacerbated or made visible because of how XP is structured. But given the number of folks I work with who are on Windows XP -and who will be on it till forced off by MS EOL support in 2014- I am hoping that Mozilla will fix this issue.

Note, Bug 827784 - "Provide an option to disable favicons on webpage shortcuts in Windows" does not seem to be the same thing at all.

And Bug 110894 - "Use favicons on webpage shortcuts in Windows" might be this issue,,, or not,,,

Appears to be a Bugzilla listing here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=834314 "Drag URL To A Window As A Shortcut = No Icon For That Shortcut"

I suppose if it's a 'feature' and not a bug someone could write an addon that fixes it? I can't imagine it would be particularly complicated, but then again I couldn't write it.

This issue has been finally addressed here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=827784

An option "browser.shell.shortcutFavicons", accessible through about:config, has been added that allows one to choose the old behavior of using generic FF icon (thus without any favicon) for shortcuts created dragging an URL from the address bar to the desktop (or whatever other directory/folder).

I would like to publicly thanks Josh Yuan for coding and Brian R. Bondy for sponsoring this fix that will be issued with Firefox rev 21.

Apparently the fix is already available with Nightly releases.

Thanks for that welcome news, smzit. Also thanks to everyone who provided input, ideas and interim workarounds -- and most of all to Mozilla coder Josh Yuan and sponsor Brian R. Bondy!

My thanks too to Josh and Brian !

So here I am on 18.02 -- how long till rev. 21 is out, and in the meanwhile how can unskilled computer people like me use the patch shown in:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=827784           ?

Oh cmon! We shouldn't have to wait 3 more versions to have this fixed! This should have never happened if they did testing in XP!

I really don't know why this icon problem arose in the first place. AFAIK, it's been working fine since the dawn of Firefox. But suddenly around v19 something broke. Why did it break and who broke it?

Program icons are a foundation (bedrock) asset that should never be changed. So someone fiddled with the code and now the goose is cooked.

It seems a tad unfair to ask the code-illiterate user of Firefox to wait until v20 or 21 for the icon problem to go away.

The default Firefox icon is part of Mozilla's branding and should never be meddled with. We users rely on icons to identify what's on our desktop.

Thanks EBID.

Question, Can you provide a second, leaner modified script so that the only two output lines are just [InternetShortcut] and URL=, as : [InternetShortcut] URL=http://download.eb-zuerich.ch/mozilla-support/ (or whatever the url is, of course)

And NOT have the extra new IDList and Prop lines added. IDList= [{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}] Prop3=19,2 (or whatever they are created as)

So that the new resulting URL would only have two lines, just like in the good old days? as:

• [InternetShortcut]
• URL=http://..............

I tried futzing with the script myself, but sad to say do not know the language and have ever only ended up with no usable output.

I am seeking for the most minimal, good old fashioned two-line URL file which has maximum compatibility between my different PCs and Macs and flash drives.

Thank you sincerely, Best.

Anyone else find it ironic that this problem arose because they wanted to extract a website's favicon for the desktop shortcuts, but FF stopped showing the favicon in the URL bar because it was a security risk?

This unbranded icon problem is not life threatening but it's a bloody nuisance inj a distraction sense.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

Plus this page seems to have lost its css formatting! Uuurgghhh!

Reload web page(s) and bypass the cache to refresh possibly outdated or corrupted files.

• Press and hold Shift and left-click the Reload button.
• Press "Ctrl + F5" or press "Ctrl + Shift + R" (Windows,Linux)
• Press "Command + Shift + R" (MAC)

Finally. It's here with FF 21. You need to add the browser.shell.shortcutFavicons entry in about:config. It doesn't come with it. Make it boolean and set it to false. Restart FF.

Confirmed: it's working but IMHO the fact that "browser.shell.shortcutFavicons" doesn't comes pre-configured in about:config makes this one of the most hidden options available in FF. I doubt that more than a handful of FF users (those who subscribed to this thread and the corresponding one in bugzilla) will ever be aware of it.

I'll ask in bugzilla to make it more visible.

• bug 827784 - Provide an option to disable favicons on webpage shortcuts in Windows
• bug 828284 - Force shortcut desktop icons off on Windows XP

(please do not comment in bug reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)