Sometimes You may find, few icons are not displaying correctly or the Icon Cache is corrupted. By following this article, you can purge or rebuild icon cache.

Windows caches or saves all icon preferences automatically to single db file, its called IconCache.db. It is a hidden file and may be corrupted due 3rd party applications or improper override preferences. Lets fix it..!

How To:

1. First we need to unhide the file, therefore go to Control Panel >> Folder Options >> View (tab) and select radio button Show hidden files, folders and drives and click on Apply or OK to commit changes. The location of the iconcache.db differs on different version of Windows.

On Windows 7 and Windows Vista

2.A In Windows Explorer, follow the path: C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local or
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local and delete the file IconCache.db

On Windows XP

2.B In Windows Explorer, follow the path: C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data or
%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data and delete the file IconCache.db

3. Now restart your PC, on next boot Windows will start icon caching from scratch.

Applies To:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows Server 2003