Rebuild Windows Vista Icons Cache – Vista Displaying Wrong Icons

28 Aug

Posted by i.nconspicuo.us as Tech/Web

Recently, I booted up Windows Vista machine and many of the icons were completely different than when I had shut the machine down. Many if not all of the icons in the Windows shell & explorer were displaying completely incorrectly. Icons for images where not the same, shortcut icons had changed, and many icons were just missing altogether.

When a correct icon was displaying, there’d be an incorrect icon displaying right next to it. Thankfully after a bit of searching, I found the following solution. Here’s how to go about rebuilding your Windows Vista Icon Cache:

Kill Explorer (use theTask Manager to do this)
Open the command prompt and go to: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local
Unhide the IconCache.db file with the following command: attrib -h IconCache.db
Delete the IconCache.db file: del IconCache.db
Start Explorer (or restart your computer)

16 Responses

Bruce

October 17th, 2007 at 12:06 am
1

Make sure you start cmd before you kill explorer process.
AGTigz

November 9th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
2

How do you execute the GOTO command properly? whenever I do it, I just get a new line with C:\Windows\system32> on it
Tim

November 29th, 2007 at 8:02 am
3

AGTigz,

goto is

cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local
Charity Anderson

December 15th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
4

Thank you! Just started to use Vista and suddenly some (not all) the icons on the Quick Launch bar showed up as colored boxes. If I moved them to the desktop, they showed correctly. Whereas, if I moved one of the icons that was showng correctly to the desktop, it showed wrong. This fixed the problem after searching for over an hour for a solution.

Also, in response to the first commenter, if the Task Manager is started and explorer is killed, then go to file -> new task (run…) and enter: cmd and the command prompt opens fine. You can also run explorer through that menu option…

Thanks again!!
Pepe

February 25th, 2008 at 5:59 am
5

Thanks so much!!
Is this normal or a bug? Why don’t they fix this issue?
I hate Vista
Sonath

December 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
6

Worked! It fixed a distorted toolbar that was driving me crazy!
Fixing incorrect Vista icons | keyongtech

January 18th, 2009 at 9:25 am
7

[...] Vista icons – refer to URL for the fix I seem to have to keep doing (say, once every 1-2 months). http://i.nconspicuo.us/2007/08/28/re…g-wrong-icons/ (I did a quick search and this problem has been reported with other, similar fixes before). Is [...]
Craig

April 19th, 2009 at 8:59 am
8

Cheers for the useful info.
Antony

August 7th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
9

Thanks! Other sources were saying to simply restart, which did not help. Your suggestion worked perfectly, and I was able to navigate to and run explorer again without having to restart at all. Cheers, mate.
Ben

August 10th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
10

Excellent tip. This worked for me, too.

If you are receiving an error when you attempt to change into your profile directory on the command prompt, your username and/or profile path probably contain a space, so you need to enclose the path location in quotes, e.g.:

> cd “%userprofile%\AppData\Local”

Also, Bruce, there’s no need to start the cmd.exe prompt before you kill the explorer.exe task; one is able to launch a new process from within the Task Manager: File -> New Task (Run…), enter cmd, and hit OK. (You can start explorer.exe after you delete the icon cache using the same process [pardon the terrible pun]).

Thanks, again, for this tip. The missing Thunderbird icon was driving me insane… especially when reinstalling Thunderbird didn’t fix the problem!
Em

December 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
11

A simple and excellent tip. It worked perfectly for me.
Adrinkit

January 23rd, 2010 at 2:02 am
12

Thanks! Also works in Windows 7
erica

January 26th, 2010 at 5:31 am
13

I just went into AppData\Local\ and deleted the .db file, through windows & it fixed the problem immediately… not sure if I’ve caused other problems in doing this, but so far so good
EJ

April 4th, 2010 at 10:22 am
14

worked for me!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you very much!!
Mihkel

August 4th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
15

Hey. I followed your steps exactly but the problem is that the iconcache.db file does not get recreated on my Vista. Tried restarting and changing screen color depth but no luck. Also I tried to these instructions again and iconcache.db wasn’t found in cmd so it’s not because the file’s hidden. Is there any other way to manually recreate the file? Cause right now I’m still stuck with ugly blank icons.

Thanks a bunch
ayra

August 12th, 2010 at 3:52 am
16

Here a complete script for a .BAT File, changes to the system drive too, if the cmd is launched on another Drive, kills explorer and deletes the IconCache.db:
@ECHO OFF
%SYSTEMDRIVE%
CD “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local”
TSKILL EXPLORER
ATTRIB -S -H -R -A IconCache.db
DEL IconCache.db
CLS
ECHO Done