How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows

12 March 03, 2023

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.

The icon cache is located at the hidden system folder location below:

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

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.
  • Site properly installed and configured for SSL (site set up and binding in IIS configured).
  • All icons for a specific file extension display the wrong icon. This may be do 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
  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.
  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.
    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.