How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows

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.

source: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/49819-icon-cache-rebuild.html