Not being able to turn icons off:
- It's likely you've set the menu to force icons on for everything on it, in the Customize dialog. The "image state" drop-down for a toolbar or context menu overrides the settings of individual items (unless it's set to "Default", which is how it comes out of the box).
Icon sizes:
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That's just how big the different types of icons are. We can't make the system icons larger, and a drive could have any icon in the world so we can't just swap it for an internal icon.
You can use a smaller version of the internal icons if you want them to match the system icons on a given toolbar or menu.
General: