I do not know what your operating system is but you can change the size of the font for individual items from the display properties, advanced without doing the 125% thingy. Just use the drop down box and choose each item that has a font option and choose the font and size you want (i.e. 11 point 12point 13point) until it is a size to your liking. This method should not affect the icon sizes.

I can change some of the stuff in Display Properties but not all of them. Taskbar buttons and text and the system tray are smaller and can't be changed. Text in some of the menus are still small. Text in windows are still small etc.

I have a program that can extract and save the icons from .exe file. I've been using that workaround to get the default icons back although it's kind of annoying.

I'm not constantly adding shortcuts to the docks but I am always using taskbar and menus so I don't think it's a good tradeoff. I think I'll just stick with the 125% text display.

Yes I've tried that. It doesn't work. I have been changing the icons or extracting and saving the original icon but it is annoying as it seems to happen half the time when adding shortcuts. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me? Can you switch to 125% text and test it out?

I am encountering the same problem of tiny icons in Windows 8 Pro if display is set to anything other than 100%.  With Windows 7, icons were fine if custom sizing was set to 105%.  But not with Windows 8.

Not all icons are affected; just some of them.  I haven't yet figured out what the common factor is to icons that come out the correct size vs ones that don't.

Decreasing screen resolution is not an option.  Nor do I want to adjust windows elements individually--things end up not fitting exactly when I do that. 

Is there a way I can make the icons display properly in ObjectDock?  If I had to create custom icons, I could do that.

Any help would be appreciated.