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

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:

Taskbar

Start Menu:

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?

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%.}

adrianbanks

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 1 054

Have you tried logging out and back in? Or restarting the computer? – Indrek – 2012-08-16T23:08:57.210

@Indrek: Yes, I've restarted several times. – adrianbanks – 2012-08-16T23:10:14.113

1Check the path for space(s) after a ; which causes everything past that point to be skipped. A path of A;B;C; D;E;F would only be seen as A;B;C. Microsoft really needs a decent editor for the path environment variable. Posting your path environment variable(s) should let others spot problems as well. – Brian – 2012-08-16T23:20:10.993

@Brian: no, there are no spaces present. – adrianbanks – 2012-08-16T23:22:16.890

Have you tried recreating the Icon cache? See Windows 7 Desktop Icons corrupt

– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-08-16T23:44:51.817

I have the exact same behavior after installing VisualStudio 2012. I can recover the icons by any of the methods already mentionned (or simply by killing all Explorer instances and restarting Explorer). However, I believe there is a broader problem: all Explorer shortcuts also stop working, and it's impossible to pin Explorer to the start menu or the taskbar. Also, the PATH variable is completely messed up. Restarting fixes the issue, but after some time, the PATH and the icons are messed up again. – Daniel Gehriger – 2012-08-29T07:55:04.900

Answers

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.

adrianbanks

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 1 054

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. – Piotr Kula – 2012-08-17T10:20:07.673

I have solved the icon issue by:

Starting the Task Manager
Ending the explorer.exe process (Right click on explorer.exe -> End process)
Opening a command line window (File -> New Task (Run...) -> Type cmd.exe)
In the cmd window type
```
cd %userprofile%\appdata\local
```
Now you need to delete the iconcache.db file
```
del iconcache.db /a 
```
Exit the cmd window by typing
```
exit
```
Starting the explorer again (File -> New Task (Run...) -> Type explorer.exe)

Now you should be able to see the restored icons.

Mario Neubauer

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 1 050

1You sir, are a gentleman and a saint. Perfect! Wish I could up-vote your answer more. – Pace – 2014-10-21T09:21:31.780

This one works as charm – starcorn – 2014-10-21T20:09:41.683

4Great, perfect answer. It should be the accepted one. – Jorge Campos – 2015-08-06T11:59:34.983

This works for me as well – Luciano Mammino – 2016-01-06T09:11:17.680

Excelent! Works perfect!! – Daniel Silva – 2017-06-12T13:59:31.647

I did not need to do anything other than kill explorer.exe and restart it. – Jonas Gröger – 2018-01-15T07:29:33.557

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

Hans Wurst

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 131

I can't believe this worked. Wow. – RubberDuck – 2016-04-04T12:15:17.310

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.

Daniel Gehriger

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 340

@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. – Scott Whitlock – 2015-04-21T11:33:04.990

I right-clicked on the item with the missing icon and chose properties. In the properties dialog box I clicked to change the icon. I changed the icon (for example, from the main program icon to the document icon for that program) and pressed OK (I had to have administrator rights to confirm). I then repeated the process to change the icon back, at which point the icon was now visible.

Ben

Posted 2012-08-16T22:58:50.773

Reputation: 1