Wrong or missing program icons in windows 7 start menu

Anonymous

For unknown reasons my start menu and task bar has started showing the wrong icons.

For example Office Outlook and several other now has a generic program icon, while some other program icons are mixed up like notepad has the vlc media player icon, the icon for a game (city of heroes) has the Paint icon and so on.

I have no idea what has caused this. The strange thing is that in "all programs" the correct icons are showing but if I right click and add them to the start menu or task bar they get an erronous icon.

Tried system restore but it doesn't work.

if I create a new user account the correct icons show in that accounts startmenu/task bar.

I would preferably trying to get my main account back in order though because it's a lot of work moving to a new user account........

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Anonymous

I found a solution for this. At least it worked for me (win 7 x64).

First, open Notepad and paste the below code:

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe

cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local

attrib –h IconCache.db

del IconCache.db

start explorer

save the file as a .bat file on your desktop.

Then open explorer and navigate to C:\users\username\appdata\local\ (make sure you've select to view hidden folders) and delete IconCache.db.

Lastly, double click on the .bat file that you saved on your desktop and all icons should be restored.

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Anonymous

Hi River99,

If the icons show properly using another user account, it is possible your user profile has been corrupted. Try the steps in this document to fix your profile.

Dena

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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57 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-08-04T15:05:33+00:00

Dena,

Rebuilding the user profile is not a valid solution to this problem.

As noted below, the problem stems from (at least in some cases) the short-cuts in the start menu being moved between the current user and all users.

The problem is exacerbated by shortcuts to Microsoft programs that the do not allow the icon to be set (ie rclick->properties, Change Icons is disabled).

Esoo Keca
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Anonymous

2010-07-30T07:57:35+00:00

This is awesome info! However, on my machine I'm the only proper user (apart from "Default" and "Public" [Win7 x64]) and neither user's directory has a programs directory.

My problem is a couple of missing icons in the start menu and an .exe with a missing icon. I can right click on the start menu icons, select properties, click on change icon, select the proper icon and apply the change but the icon isn't restored. With the .exes, I don't have the option of changing the icons.

I dragged and dropped the icons into different start menu groups (Defraggler to start\maintenance, that sort of thing) which's probably what caused it.

Can you tell me how to "move the folders to the same place for all users"?
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Anonymous

2010-07-28T20:15:32+00:00

i have the same problem in win 7 64. i think i've found the problem and a solution. when a program installs for all users and you then move the start menu folders, it moves the folders to your local user account start menu. if you move the folders to the same place for all users (instead of just you), you can then go into the shortcut and fix the icon and the icons will show up.
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