Windows Shortcut Icon Issue

Question

I created nice, large 512x512 ICO files for use as icons for my shortcuts. However, for some reason, when I scale them up some of them just do not scale. I've lived with it for 3 months, but, last night, many more suddenly began suffering from this issue. I have no idea what's causing it, but it's very annoying. I have tried renaming the icon files, but the issue still persists. It doesn't matter if I create new shortcuts or rename the ICO files, the problem still continues.

Here, Gotham City Imposters, Left 4 Dead 2, Super Hexagon, and Surgeon Simulator 2013 are exhibiting the issue (icons not scaling up) while Magicka, Natural Selection 2, Orcs Must Die! 2, Sanctum, Sanctum 2, Serious Sam 3: BFE, Team Fortress 2, and Trine 2 are working just fine.

Could anyone help me remedy this problem? I'd love for all my icons to be seen at full size.

Answer 1

Method One:

Try clearing your icon cache. Here's how to do it:

Source: How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/49819-icon-cache-rebuild.html)

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.

   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
   • 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.

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Method Two:

Clear your thumbnail cache. Here's how to do it:

Source: To Clear and Reset Thumbnail Cache using Disk Cleanup (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/10797-thumbnail-cache-clear-reset.html)

1. Open Disk Cleanup.

2. Check the Thumbnails box, and click on OK.

   

3. Click on the Delete Files button.

   

4. Disk Cleanup will now clear the thumbnail cache and close.