How to fix icon cache files in Windows 10

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Have you ever had an issue with your desktop icons and seen black rectangles on them?

In this short post, I will guide you through how you can fix your icons in Windows 10.

If your icons look weird probably they are corrupted, this can apply to thumbnails too.

Deleting the icon cache database, files can fix this issue. After purging these files Windows will rebuild the icon cache database automatically.

Then you just need to quickly reboot your system and your icons, and thumbnails will look great again.

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■ Open the file explorer with Win + E.

■ Focus the address bar with F4.

■ Copy the following address there and hit Enter.

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

■  Select the icon cache files, please see the picture below.

Deleting Icon Cache files

■  Try to delete (purge) the selected files.

( Don’t be afraid some files maybe cannot be deleted, you can skip these files. )

■ Finally, reboot your system.

Alternatively, you can use the following AutoHotkey script to delete the cache files. In the past few weeks, I faced this issue several times so I decided to make a short script to purge the icon cache. I included it in my main script, GUI so the whole process takes just two clicks.

Please see the following AHK v1 code:

Path := "C:\Users\" A_UserName "\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer"
Loop, Files, % Path "\" "iconcache*.*"
    FileDelete, % A_LoopFilePath
return