Weird icon behavior....

I made an icon for my program and I used http://www.icoconverter.com/ to convert my icon into a .ico file so I could use it in my program. I built the program and I got the program from my release folder and I put it on my desktop and the icon looks like this
Attachment 100317
But, if I rename the file something like "afsadgubdgu" then the icon changes to the proper icon. HOWEVER, if I rename the program to the original name. the icon goes back to looking like this
Attachment 100317

I AM SO CONFUSED!

That's most likely because Windows icon cache is corrupted. The icon cache is (normally) located here:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\IconCache.db

Try to delete that file and restart Windows.

Note that this is a hidden file so you must have "Show hidden files" set in the File Explorer options.

I doubt the icon cache is "corrupted" at all, but merely doing what it supposed to. It doesn't get updated immediately for existing files because the overhead of watching every file for such a change constantly would be ridiculous.

Usually you should just let it go until Explorer needs to refresh the item icons in the folder your program is in.

I can't really see what the problem is? But if it has something to do the aspect ratio on the website it says "Aspect ratio is not preserved, so squarish images are recommended".

I guess the confusion is that he posted the same icon image twice. That the website mentions aspect ratio has nothing to do with it, that is about how the conversion of the image to an icon is made (if you upload an image that isn't square the produced icon might look strange since that will be square).

The problem is that he has changed the program icon but it still shows the default. This has to do with the Windows icon cache, the old icon is still cached and is the one that is shown.

If you really need to "see" that the new icon is there you can usually just switch views in the Explorer window to one using another icon size. And of course you can also just copy the EXE to another location and see the new icon picked up there. In some cases I managed to see the new icon picked up by closing the Explorer window and opening a new one.

Barring that a logoff/logon might do it, and a reboot certainly will.

I'm not sure that this is a problem. A nuisance at times yes, but hardly worth fretting over.

Does the icon appear properly on the form during design time?