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Right-click on the Windows taskbar and choose “Task Manager” from the shortcut menu. You should see the iconcache and thumbcache files we discussed earlier appear. To make sure the command prompt is in the correct folder, type the dir command. Select “Open command window here.”Ī command prompt window will open at that path: Press and hold the “Shift” key and right-click on the Explorer folder. Open File Explorer and go to the following folder: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer How to Rebuild the Icon CacheĬlose and save anything that you are working on before proceeding. It’s not as simple as clicking on them and pressing Delete, though: those files are still in use by Explorer, so you can’t just delete them normally. To rebuild the icon cache, you have to delete all the iconcache files that appear in this folder. (Replace with the actual login name for your Windows account.) In this folder, you will find a number of icon cache files: In Windows 8 and Windows 10, the icon cache file is located in: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer This file is still present in Windows 8 and 10, but Windows does not use them to store the icon cache.
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(Replace with the actual login name for your Windows account.) In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the icon cache file is located in: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\IconCache.db Solomon in their Windows Internals book, if you’re curious to learn more, but the basics are all you need to understand for this process. If it doesn’t find one, it’ll check the executable file and scan the application directory.Ĭaching mechanisms, such as the IconCache database, have been already discussed by multiple system specialists, and in depth by Mark E. According to this document from MSDN knowledgebase, when Windows needs to display an icon, it’ll check the cache, and display the cached icon if a match is found. The database file grows as more information is added to it. When you shut down or restart, it will write this cache to a hidden file on your hard drive, so it doesn’t have to reload all those icons later. As a result, Windows save icons it’s already retrieved in its memory. Having to retrieve all possible icon images from hard disk and to render them dynamically can consume lots of system resources. Icons are everywhere in Windows: the Control Panel, Programs and Features, File Explorer, and so on.
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