Author: Lou Adler 

I can't get the system icons to show in XP. All works well in Win 98 but in XP no 
icons are loaded. Why?

Answer:

Because in NT each process gets its own imagelist and to minimize resources the 
imagelist is populated on demand. So if the process does not request an image it is 
not loaded. To force it you need to use an undocumeted function:

1   { ... }
2   uses
3     ShellAPI;
4   
5   function FileIconInit(FullInit: BOOL): BOOL; stdcall;
6   type
7     TFileIconInit = function(FullInit: BOOL): BOOL; stdcall;
8   var
9     ShellDLL: HMODULE;
10    PFileIconInit: TFileIconInit;
11  begin
12    Result := False;
13    if (Win32Platform = VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT) then
14    begin
15      ShellDLL := LoadLibrary(PChar(Shell32));
16      PFileIconInit := GetProcAddress(ShellDLL, PChar(660));
17      if (Assigned(PFileIconInit)) then
18        Result := PFileIconInit(FullInit);
19    end;
20  end;
21  
22  initialization
23    FileIconInit(True);
24  
25    { ... }