Trouble:
We have received this problem in mail from some of the reader who complained about icons display problem, icons did not appear properly or even the icons do not display for a particular file type. For some of the people icons for a specific file type changed to different random icon, all or some of the icons become black.
In order to fix all of the above mentioned you will need to force Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 to rebuild the icon cache to fix all these problems.
See Also: Icons or Taskbar Disappears – Fixed
Here is how can you re build the icon cache
Fix:
Read Also: [Fixed] – Vista Icons Too Large Or Too Small
Manual Method To Rebuild Icon Cache
Follow the procedure below to re build the cache of icons in windows
1. Firstly you will need to show hidden files and folders
2. Now, open windows explorer and navigate to
For Vista and Windows 7
C:\Users\(You Vista User Name)\AppData\Local
For Example
C:\Users\abhi\AppData\Local
For Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\(Your User Name)\Local Settings)\Application Data
For Example:
C:\Documents and Settings\abhi\Local Settings)\Application Data
3. Delete the file named Iconcache.db
4. now close all the process and restart your computer, at the time logging in windows will automatically re create the Iconcache.db file.
Automatically Method To Rebuild Icon Cache
There is one free utility called Icon Refresh which automatically deletes and let widows to recreate the icon cache to fix all the problems.
Icon Refresh is a simple portable utility for resetting windows icon cache files, this small application comes out to be useful windows does display the icon for a known file type or
Download Icon Refresh
Comments
Am using Windows 7, the portable utility does not work at all. Tried it, but there was no changes.
In fact, even without it, I did the removal of the IconCache.db manually, and then restart explorer.exe or computer, there was absolutely no changes. What’s worse, IconCache.db was not rebuilt after several times of restarting.
Thanks for the tips. The icon problem is solved.
Clearing and Rebuilding Icon Cache:
To automate this process open notepad and paste the code below, save it to desktop as RefreshIcons.bat, double click on the file and you are all set. You can do this every time the icon cache needs to be rebuilt. Make sure all your applications are closed whenever you run this.
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
attrib –h IconCache.db
del IconCache.db
start explorer
Rebuilding the icon cache in Windows 7:
Log out and log back in.
Deleting the iconcache.db file is very damaging. It deletes ALL icons from your computer. Please, becarefull!