Desktop Icons reverting to the blue e

[Protronie]

First off, I did search first but did not find what I was looking for.
And yes I know this is slightly O/T but I need help/answers to the aggravating
quirk.

Please forgive posting in wrong place and not using proper names but I'm not a hi tech computer person.

The problem;
When I put a shortcut to C/D (and other sites) on my desktop theres usually the cute little icon ... in C/D's case its the nice orange box with the 47 in it.
Things stay like that for a time but then something (don't know if I do it or the computer does it on its own) the custom icon will revert to that standard i/e icon with the blue e and I have to look hard to find the shortcut I want from all the ones on my desktop that look the same.

How I've been dealing with this;
I usually put up with it and one by one, go to the site, delete the desktop shortcut and reload it again which usually works for a time . This I've put up with since I got my first computer. I'm currently on my second.

I have trouble believing I'm the only person to be dealing with this.

So... could someone out there please explain to me in simple english whats going on and is there some why to fix this problem.

I thank you in advance and steel myself for the flood of "your stupid" post.

[sanddrag]

Those icons are temporary files that are deleted each time you clear the internet cache. There are programs out there that can retain them for you. Sounds like this might be what you need.

[whitetiger0990]

Using Chief Delphi as an example,

You can download the icon yourself and save it somewhere.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/favicon.ico

Then you can go to your desktop, right click the shortcut, go the properties.
Somewhere in there should be a Change Icon button (in Vista it's under the Web Document tab). Click it, find where you saved the icon. As long as the .ico file stays where you saved it, that'll be the icon for that shortcut. Sanddrag is probably right and the file is being saved in the cache which is clearing every once and awhile.

You can do this with other sites too. The file is usually called 'favicon.ico' and is in the root directory of the site. (E.g.: http://www.google.com/favicon.ico http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico etc) You can rename it when you save it (you should probably preserve the .ico extension)

[Protronie]

Wow quick replies with help, yeah thats exactly whats happening I think.

So is this saving the icons and such something everyone usually does or am I just being picky about them disappearing all the time?

Thanks for the tips.!