If you find that one or more of your icons are not displaying correctly, or that your icon cache is corrupted, you might want to consider rebuilding your icon cache. What’s Icon Cache in Windows? Well, It’s a special file that Windows utilizes to keep copies of each icon handy. When Windows needs to draw an icon, it uses the copy from the cache instead of retrieving the icon image from the original application file. This helps in making Windows draw the icons faster.

By the way, where’s the location of this icon cache file? The location of the icon cache file depends on the version of Windows that you have. In Windows 7 and Vista, the icon cache file is:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\IconCache.db.

Whereas, it is different in the older version of Windows i.e. Windows XP.

If you find your Windows displaying icons on the desktop in the wrong manner you can ‘Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache In Windows’.

Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache In Windows

To do so, Open Windows Explorer, and configure your Folder Options > Views to show Hidden / System Files. Next go to C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local folder and delete the hidden IconCache.db file. Reboot. This action will purge and rebuild the icon cache.

There is also another way to do it, should the above method not work for you.

Kill Explorer.exe process. To do so, click Start button > Hold down Ctrl+Shift & Right Click on empty area in the Start Menu > Click “Exit Explorer”.

Open the command prompt window.

You may also want to check out our freeware Icon Cache Rebuilder to automate the entire process of repairing icon cache.