Icons missing their specialized image

Anonymous

Some of the shortcuts on my desktop and start menu are missing their images. For example I have the Windows Live icon that is pinned to the taskbar but it is showing the default MS OS image (the one when the OS does not reconize the file the shortcut targets). Six out of 8 icons on my desktop are missing their images. The shortcuts work fine. No problems. The OS is up to date as far as downloads are concerned.

I turned off my computer Friday (2/5) and turned it on Sunday 2/7 and the icons were messed up. Like I said not all the icons are messed up. It is like the images the shortcuts pointed to were deleted somehow.

I would appreciate your help.

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Anonymous

Hi tagger1961,

Have you recently installed or uninstalled any software or hardware?

I would suggest you to rebuild the icon cache and check if the issue is resolved.

Rebuilding the Icon Cache Database:

1. Close all folder windows that are currently open.

2. Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence, or by running taskmgr.exe.

3. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.

4. Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.

5. From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run…)

6. Type CMD.EXE, and click OK

7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local

DEL IconCache.db /a

EXIT

8. In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run…)

9. Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK.

If the issue still persist, I would suggest you to create a new user account and check.

To create a user account:

1. To open User Accounts, click the Start button, click Control Panel, click User Accounts and Family Safety, and then click User Accounts.

2. Click Manage another account. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. Click Create a new account.

4. Type the name you want to give the user account, click an account type, and then click Create Account.

For further information, visit the below mentioned link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/Create-a-user-account

If the issue is solved in new user account, you may have corrupted profile.

Below is the link to troulbleshoot a corrupted profile, you can follow the steps mentioned in the link.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows7/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

Hope this information helped!

Thanks and regards,

Fouzan – Microsoft support.

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90 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-10-29T07:09:51+00:00

7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local

OK this part did not work for me. On my machine it falls over on the first part of this this i.e. " CD /d %userprofile%".

I had to type this to get it to work "CD c:\users%userprofile%\appdata\local"

Having got to the correct directory the fix did work so thanks for that, but I thought it worth mentioning that some folks may not be getting this to work because of the path.
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Anonymous

2011-01-16T16:09:47+00:00

This was perfect; thanks for posting--hope this become a windows update in the future.
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Anonymous

2011-03-24T16:14:42+00:00

thanks this was a quick solution for our trouble :)
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Anonymous

2011-04-11T01:24:57+00:00

Perfect solution, thank you so much!
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