How to fix missing icons in the taskbar and start menu?

Question

I installed Visual Studio 2012 yesterday and during the install my path somehow got screwed up¹. Since then, the icons for applications that are part of Windows are the default "unknown" icon, but other icons are fine. The applications that the shortcuts link to launch fine when the icons are clicked on.

Taskbar:

Start Menu:

I have fixed my path, but the icons still show incorrectly.

Any ideas on how to flush what appears to be a set of cached icons?

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¹ _{Something took a path of A;B;C;D; and turned it into A;B;C;D;A;B;C;D;E;F; - duplicating a large part of it to that point that no more characters were available to type in the edit box in system properties. This had the side-effect of Windows reporting that it couldn't find %windir%.}

Solution 1

I eventually solved this by following the advice given here, although not the advice in the article but the advice in one of the comments:

change momentarily the screen color depth to 16 bits, for example, and, when Windows asks you whether you want to keep the changes or not, click "No" to restore the original settings.

The advice in the main body of the article (about changing the view hidden folders and files setting) didn't work.

Solution 2

I have solved the icon issue by:

1. Starting the Task Manager
2. Ending the explorer.exe process (Right click on explorer.exe -> End process)
3. Opening a command line window (File -> New Task (Run...) -> Type cmd.exe)
4. In the cmd window type

   cd %userprofile%\appdata\local

5. Now you need to delete the iconcache.db file

   del iconcache.db /a 

6. Exit the cmd window by typing

   exit

7. Starting the explorer again (File -> New Task (Run...) -> Type explorer.exe)

Now you should be able to see the restored icons.

Solution 3

for me the pin and unpin function of the taskbar did the trick

Solution 4

I think that loosing the icons is only one of the symptoms of a broader problem, which is that the PATH variable gets messed up. See the following discussion on the VisualStudio forum. The problem seems to be caused by an excesively long PATH variable.

View more solutions

Comments

[Piotr Kula]

Yea something to do with icon caching. I had simialr issue with my chrome icon dissapearing comming back dissapearing. After a long awaited format its ok now.

[Pace]

You sir, are a gentleman and a saint. Perfect! Wish I could up-vote your answer more.

[starcorn]

This one works as charm

[Scott Whitlock]

@MarioNeubauer's answer worked for me once, and then it came back and that didn't fix it the second time. This was the ultimate answer.

[Jorge Campos]

Great, perfect answer. It should be the accepted one.

[Luciano Mammino]

This works for me as well

[RubberDuck]

I can't believe this worked. Wow.

[Daniel Silva]

Excelent! Works perfect!!

[shital chakrawar]

I did not need to do anything other than kill explorer.exe and restart it.