All icons are gone on my computer, on my taskbar, desktop, and even in task manager.

[SaVaGeHFF]

I have no Icons displayed on my computer anywhere, all icons on my task manager show up as windows exe icons. On my desktop it only displays the text and even when you highlights the folders it only highlights the text. Even in my task manager there are no icons displayed on any programs. My control panel is also completely blank for some reason. No updates were done prior to this problem.

http://imgur.com/a/QLoZU

 

[Regedit32]

Hi SaVaGeHFF,

It sounds like one or more of your iconcache's may be corrupted.

You can delete these and sign out and back in to let them be rebuilt which ought to resolve your issue.

There are two locations you'll find these:

• %localappdata%\IconCache.db
  • (e.g. C:\Users\Regedit32\AppData\Local\IconCache.db)
• %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
  • (e.g. C:\Users\Regedit32\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer)
  • This second location will contain multiple iconcache_.db files each with its own number

To be able to delete these you need to ensure running applications that use them are not on.

If you need further assistance with this let us know.


Regards,

Regedit32

 

[SaVaGeHFF]

Hi SaVaGeHFF,

It sounds like one or more of your iconcache's may be corrupted.

You can delete these and sign out and back in to let them be rebuilt which ought to resolve your issue.

There are two locations you'll find these:

• %localappdata%\IconCache.db
  • (e.g. C:\Users\Regedit32\AppData\Local\IconCache.db)
• %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
  • (e.g. C:\Users\Regedit32\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer)
  • This second location will contain multiple iconcache_.db files each with its own number

To be able to delete these you need to ensure running applications that use them are not on.

If you need further assistance with this let us know.


Regards,

Regedit32

Ok so i deleted the files but when i restarted my computer it didnt rebuild them for some reason, whats that about?

 

[Data]

@SaVaGeHFF

Can you add the contents to a bat file and run as administrator.

@echo off
set iconcache=%localappdata%\IconCache.db

echo ************************************************************************************************
echo The Explorer process must be killed to delete the Icon DB.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo Please SAVE ALL OPEN WORK before continuing.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo.
pause
echo.
If exist "%iconcache%" goto delID
echo.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo Icon DB has already been deleted.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo.
pause
exit /B

:delID
echo ***********************************************************************************************
echo Attempting to delete Icon DB...
echo ***********************************************************************************************
echo.
ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCache
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
del "%iconcache%" /A
echo.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo Icon DB has been successfully deleted
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo You should be able to see new icons immediately without PC restart.
echo Restarting your PC for rebuilding cache MAY be necessary later if no effects are seen.
echo ************************************************************************************************
echo.
start explorer.exe
pause
exit /B

There should be no need to restart WIndows, it will clear the icon cache remove all files in a prescribed manner.
What this does that what @Regedit32 didnt do is kill explorer before and restarting it after removing the Icon Cache. This way you can see results immediately, and restarting windows is required only after subsequent Icon Cache clearing operations.

whats that about?

Clearing the icon cache is a common practice where the icons are corrupt like yours, if this does not work the issue lies elsewhere.