Many people have had the unwelcome experience of installing RealPlayer for Linux and finding that the installation has assigned RealPlayer icons to their mp3, movie, and other media file formats. There has been a lot of thrashing around in the Ubuntu forums with people trying to figure out how to reverse the changes.
I had the same problem with Realplayer 11 installation setting up all sorts of default icons without asking. I looked at its logs and found 173 xdg-icon-resource commands forcing its icons into the desktop icon system.
Needless to say I was not amused.
Fortunately the installation log provided enough information to reverse the damage. I created a script to do it. This is for Ubuntu; it should work in other distros too, but I have only tested it in Ubuntu, so use your own good judgment.
1) Download my script here: http://www.dwasifar.com/fixicons.tar.gz
2) Unpack the script file fixicons.sh and set it executable (right-click, Properties, Permissions, and check Executable).
3) Double-click to run.
This should reverse all RealPlayer’s icon mischief, but results are not guaranteed. You may want to check the RealPlayer install log for yourself first. Also, please note that if you had previously set up custom icons for the media file types, this script will not restore them; it will instead return the icon mappings to the default (presumably what was in place when you first installed Ubuntu).
