Guide | How To How to Rebuild Windows 7 - Icon Cache

[Exterminator]

I have this problem in Windows 7 from time to time.When I download or uninstall a 3rd party program and some of my icons are not showing properly.There are 2 ways to correct this by rebuilding the Icon Cache either manually or with a convenient bat file that you run and does everything for you.I use the bat file which works every time.

*I have used this for quite sometime and thought I would share it here

Automatically Rebuild the Icon Cache

1. Download the .bat file below.

Rebuild_Icon_Cache.bat

2. Save the file to your desktop, and run it.

3. Click on Run when prompted.

4. Command prompt will then ask you to type in y/n {yes or no} to restart your computer

5. Restart PC and all your icons should be back to normal

To Manually Rebuild the Icon Cache using the Command Prompt

1. Close and save anything that you are working on. This command will kill explorer and restart the computer when completed.

2. Open a command prompt in Windows 7 or Windows 8.

3. In the command prompt, Copy and paste each command line below exactly as is one at a time and press enter after each command.

NOTE: The last command will restart the computer, so be sure to close and save anything that you are working on first.

taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
shutdown /r /f /t 00

4. The IconCache.db file has now been rebuilt.

Source

 

[Littlebits]

Very helpful, I have had to do this before manually.

Thanks.

 

[Exterminator]

Very helpful, I have had to do this before manually.

Thanks.

I used to do it manually also,then found this bat file which made it a snap.I just thought of it today when I had to do it again.

 

[Deleted member 178]

Umbra Corporation was first : http://malwaretips.com/Thread-How-to-Rebuild-the-Icon-Cache-in-Windows-7

 

[McLovin]

This is good. This has happened to me before and thanks to this I won't have to do it manually. Thanks White and Umbra.

 

[doubletap33]

My dad's laptop has the problem. After cleaning up some mess on the laptop, the desktop icons or shortcut icons just went missing or deleted from the desktop.Disappeared. I had to resort making new shortcut icons. But the icon are not the image or design that it should be on the desktop, it's just a file icon.