RyanTAdams.com

Technology Advice by Ryan Taylor Adams

Fixing Icon Problems By Rebuilding the Windows’ Icon Cache (XP/Vista)

March 29th, 2009 · No Comments · Printer Friendly Version

WARNING! THIS POST IS MORE THAN 180 DAYS OLD!

While I make an effort to update older posts to keep them relevant and technically accurate, the rapidly changing nature of the tech world makes it possible that the content of this post may no longer be relevant, current, or even accurate. Additionally, because of this post's age, adding new comments has been disabled. If you would like to contribute new information to this post, or have questions pertaining to this post, please use the Contact Form.


If you have icons that are not displaying correctly (for example, showing a different icon), you may need to rebuild Windows’ icon cache. This does not change any icons, but only clears the cache to get rid of corrupt information. After clearing the icon cache, you may want to increase its size to prevent future problems. Instructions are provided for both Windows Vista and Windows XP.


Windows Vista:

To rebuild the Vista icon cache, download and run this file.

To increase the maximum size of the icon cache, download and run this file.

Windows XP:

To rebuild the XP icon cache, download and run this file.

To increase the maximum size of the icon cache, download and run this file.