How to Rebuild a Broken Icon Cache in Windows 10

Close and save anything that you are working on before proceeding. Open File Explorer and go to the following folder:

C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

(Replace <your username> with the actual login name for your Windows account.)

Press and hold the “Shift” key and right-click on the Explorer folder. Select “Open command window here.”

A command prompt window will open at that path:

To make sure the command prompt is in the correct folder, type the dir command. You should see the iconcache and thumbcache files we discussed earlier appear.

Right-click on the Windows taskbar and choose “Task Manager” from the shortcut menu.

Right-click on “Windows Explorer” in the list and choose “End task” from the shortcut menu. The Explorer and desktop will disappear. Exit Task Manager and make sure that no other application is running except for the command prompt window.

In the command prompt window type the following command:

del iconcache*

Press Enter. The asterisk after iconcache is necessary to make sure all files with names that start with iconcache will be included in the delete operation. That should delete all the icon cache files.

Run the dir command to check the list of remaining files. If one or more iconcache files are still listed, it means some applications are still running in the background. Close them and repeat the procedure again, if necessary.

Now press the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys simultaneously, and choose “Sign off.” Sign back in, and any out-of-date or missing icons should hopefully get repaired or re-created.

Remember, rebuilding the icon cache will not help with thumbnails issues (you’ll need to go through this process to do that), the wrong icon for a specific file extension, or a missing shortcut icon. But if you have other icon problems, hopefully rebuilding the icon cache will fix them.