Rebuild icon cache to fix incorrectly displayed icons
4 July 2003 by Snakefoot | Comment » | Trackback OffThe icons used in Windows are saved in an icon cache, which has been invented
to optimize the display of icons, so it doesn't have to open every exe-/dll-files and scan
for icon images all the time.
This caching can become corrupted and lead to garbled/fuzzy icons:
More Info MS KB Q133733
More Info MS KB Q146213
More Info MS KB Q199152
More Info MS KB Q216165
This caching can become corrupted and lead to garbled/fuzzy icons:
- An icon are changed to a different random icon
- Several icons are drawn on top of each other
- An icon becomes all black
- Restarting the computer will solve the problem for most people
- Recreate the Icon-Cache by changing icon size (Another way is to Rebuild Icons in Tweak UI):
- Open Control Panel and double click Display-applet
- Select Appearance-tab and in Item-dropdown select Icon
- Increase Size and press Apply-button
- Decrease Size back to old value and press Apply-button
- Press Ok-button
- Increase the limitation for the iconcache with this DWORD:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer]
Max Cached Icons = 2048 (Range = 100-4096, Default = 512) - Recreate the Icon-Cache file by deleting it
- Delete the hidden file ShellIconCache (Win9x/NT4/2k):
Note in WinXP each user has their own file that is called Iconcache.db:C:\Windows\ShellIconCache or C:\Winnt\ShellIconCache
C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Iconcache.db
Note in Vista each user has their own file that is called Iconcache.db:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Iconcache.db
- Delete the hidden file ShellIconCache (Win9x/NT4/2k):
- Close down all explorer.exe processes using the Task Manager (Or else it will create a faulty file at logoff)
- Logoff or restart the computer (Press CTRL+ALT+DEL)
- During login it will recreate a correct Icon-Cache file
- Uninstall Tweak UI (If installed) using the Add/Remove applet in the Control Panel.
To uninstall by command line (WinNT+):
To uninstall by command line (Win9x):rundll32.exe syssetup.dll,SetupInfObjectInstallAction DefaultUninstall 4 %Windir%\Inf\Tweakui.Inf
rundll.exe setupx.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 4 C:\Windows\Inf\Tweakui.Inf
More Info MS KB Q133733
More Info MS KB Q146213
More Info MS KB Q199152
More Info MS KB Q216165
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Updated: 10 January 2008
Comment by James - 22 June 2008 @ 10:00 Reply
Thank you! I was having this problem with Windows XP — some icons in the start menu were broken along with some on the desktop.
I noticed that if I changed the Properties > Target to remove quotes, it helped with a few. But was incomplete.
I appreciate the time you took to put this article up!
Thanks,
James