Windows Tools, Help & Guides

If you’re using Windows and find that icons for common files are displaying as blank icons, it’s because your icon cache is corrupted. Learn, in this guide, how to rebuild the icon cache in Windows Vista and 7.

To rebuild the cache, you’ll need to delete a file that is hidden by default. If you have not yet changed this default follow the steps in the next section. Otherwise skip to the “Delete and Rebuild the Icon Cache” section.

Show Hidden Files

To show hidden files:

1. Open Computer, press the Alt key, click Tools > Folder options…
   

   

2. Click the View tab, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and click OK.
   

   

Delete and Rebuild the Icon Cache

To delete the icon cache:

1. Open computer, type %username%\AppData\Local in the address box, and press Enter:
   

   
   

2. Delete IconCache.db.

To rebuild the icon cache, simply restart your computer. Now, you should see the correct icons again:

Before:

After:

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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