Windows 10 shows icons for files, those icons are saved so that Windows doesn’t have to regenerate them each time and can quickly display them, thus saving system resources in the process. In some cases which cannot always be prevented the Icon Cache becomes corrupted which could lead to icons not displaying, displaying incorrectly or the icons looks distorted. If you have distorted icons or incorrect icons in Windows 10 then this guide will help you resolve those issues.
You will need to have access to an Administrator account on the computer which is experiencing these issues.
How to Rebuild the Windows 10 Icon Cache
1. First of all you need to open an elevated Command Prompt (Administrator)
2. Once the Command Prompt has been opened you need to enter the following command:
ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCache
3. Once that command has finished executing you’ll will need to close all Explorer processes, to do that type the following command in the Command Prompt window.
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
4. Once all Explorer processes are closed (your taskbar and such will be gone) you need to enter the following command to remove the IconCache.db file.
DEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /A
5. Once that command has succesfully removed the IconCache.db file you’ll need to reboot your computer, you can do that by entering the following command, be sure that all your open files are saved since Windows instantaneously reboots when this command is given.
shutdown /r /f /t 00
That’s it, if all went well the Icons should again be working after the system has rebooted, it could take some time for the icons to be regenerated. We hope this small tutorial helped you on How to Rebuild the Windows 10 Icon Cache. If you still experience problems then please feel free to visit our forums and ask for more help.
