Icon Cache - Rebuild

How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows​

   Information

If one or more of your icons are not displaying correctly, or that your icon cache is corrupted, then you might consider rebuilding the icon cache to reset and reload the icon images into the icon cache in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

   Note

This will not help with any of the following icon issues:

• A shortcut's icon that is not displayed properly due to the source of the shortcut being moved or deleted. You may need to recreate a new shortcut directly from the source (ex: program's exe) file to replace it instead.
• All icons for a specific file extension display the wrong icon. This may be due to setting the wrong association for what program to open the file extension instead. You can restore the default file extension's associations to fix this icon instead.

OPTION ONE

Automatically Rebuild the Icon Cache

1. Click/tap on the download button below to download the file below.
Rebuild_Icon_Cache.bat

Download


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

3. Click/tap on Run when prompted.

4. Follow the instructions in the command prompt to rebuild the Icon Cache. (see screenshot below)

5. Restart your computer to generate a new IconCache.db file.

6. If the icons are still not displaying properly, then download and merge the ICO option in this tutorial for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to restore the default associations of .ico (icon) files.

OPTION TWO

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

• ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCache
• taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
• DEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /A
• DEL "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" /A
• shutdown /r /f /t 00

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

5. If the icons are still not displaying properly, then download and merge the ICO option in this tutorial for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to restore the default associations of .ico (icon) files.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Change the Icon Cache Size in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8
• How to Clear and Reset the Thumbnail Cache in Windows 7
• Restore Default Windows 7 File Extension Type Associations
• How to Change or Restore Default Windows 7 Desktop Icons
• How to Restore Windows 7 Default User Folder Icons
• How to Change the Default Icon of a File Extension in Windows 7
• How to Reset the Favorites Favicons in Vista and Windows 7

 

[dwilkows]

Clean Install Windows 7

I think I'll develop a tolerance for the little quirks of my existing Windows 7 rather than reinstall everything. Thanks for the education--it's much appreciated and I'll keep in on the back burner in case things deteriorate!

 

[Brink]

I don't blame you for only this issue.

 

[Frank1]

Downloading and running the Rebuild_Icon_Cache.bat solved the problem for me.
Thanks

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Frank. I'm happy to hear it was able to help.

 

[Sigma]

Amazing. I simply downloaded and ran the .bat file and voila my problem was instantly solved!

Thanks a lot, you're a lifesaver!

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Sigma, and welcome to Seven Forums.

 

[snurfer]

Awesome! Thank you very much for the quick fix! I manually rebuilt the cache and now I have my icons back. You have a ton of good tutorials on here and this is definitely one of them!

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Snurfer. I'm glad that it was able to help.

 

[grillmaster423]

Simply Awesome

Just edited imageres and windows would not load the ico group properly.

A run of your script and boom, tadah, shazaam.

Thanks a bunch bud.

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome grillmaster. I'm happy to hear it was able to help.

 

[BurningTom]

Thank you

Thank you so much, The icons displaying wrong wasn't the end of the world, but after buying a top of the range PC... All must be perfect.

Just writing to say Thanks...

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Tom, and welcome to Seven Forums.

 

[Law91]

thanks shawn.. it is really worked.. sorry for my bad english..

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Law91, and welcome to Seven Forums. You're English is just fine.

 

[Thermaltake]

Hi, I have strange problem with .cur icons in cursor folder, just to let you know I don't have any virus on PC or anything like that he is clean on startup and everything is clean. When I enter cursor folder in {Hard Disk letter}\Program file(x86)\Windows\Cursors some icons show normal pictures but some of them took some picture from other programs like Photoshop, Fireworks or something like that, I tried to go in control panel mouse and tried to change some of my cursors, and in window that opens to choose cursor, all cursors are showing normal, but only when I enter in Cursor folder from windows explorer that strange icon change thing happend, I mean I don't have any problems or malfunctions in windows, just when I enter in that folder cursor pictures on some icons are not look like as they should look. Here is screenshot so you can better understand what my problem is. I tried to clear icon cache and it worked for day or two but after that it was happening again I even created MaxCachedIcons and put it 2048 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and clear icon cache after that two, and it's still the same. Any idea how to restore that to always be normal looking ?

 

[Brink]

Hello Thermaltake, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Does it do the same using Details view instead?

 

[Thermaltake]

Thanks!

Yes on every view. Folder is now set to view them as titles, but I tried to change them and still same. Here is picture of detail view as you can see it's still same:

 

[Brink]

Since this is only happening with your .cur files, you might see if downloading the .reg file for the list CUR option in the tutorial below may help.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html
Afterwards, rebuild the icon cache again.

 

[Thermaltake]

I tried you method but I didn't help, I find that problem on my brothers computer two, he also have win 7 64 bit like me, maybe thats some bug ni windows or something, I read somewhere that some guy convert them all to .bmp files or something like that and that helped him with that, I mean icons were showing normal after that convertion.

 

[Brink]

You don't want to convert them to .bmp files. Doing so will have them no longer work for your pointer since it uses .cur files.

Just as a test, create a new account, log on to it, and see if it's doing the same in it.