Recently I was messing around with icon changers, and used an application to change my icons. When I restored my icons back to the windows default, my folder icons, such as pictures, music, desktop, and etc began to not show up in my superbar/taskbar. I'm wondering if anyone could help me with this?
Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about:
[external image: Posted Image]
As you can see, instead of the special little music folder icon, i get a blank icon
The reason seems to be that icons stored have for some reason disappeared (inexplicably?). The solution is also stupidly simple after i've tried every suggestion in this thread.
1) go to start menu and search for: cmd
2) right click on cmd and choose "run as administrator" (–> this causes command line to change from C:\users\ to change to: C:\windows\system32).
3) turn off everything you are doing after saving your work because now you will be closing explorer.exe
4) in the command line enter each command separately and with enter following each line
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
shutdown /r
5) after the restart, everything should be back to normal.
This is a complete fix for the problem and not a work around and I can verify that it worked for me. Good luck all.
The reason seems to be that icons stored have for some reason disappeared (inexplicably?). The solution is also stupidly simple after i've tried every suggestion in this thread.
1) go to start menu and search for: cmd
2) right click on cmd and choose "run as administrator" (–> this causes command line to change from C:\users\ to change to: C:\windows\system32).
3) turn off everything you are doing after saving your work because now you will be closing explorer.exe
4) in the command line enter each command separately and with enter following each line
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
shutdown /r
5) after the restart, everything should be back to normal.
This is a complete fix for the problem and not a work around and I can verify that it worked for me. Good luck all.
Sorry for the delay in responding, I was away for a bit.
I would try doing a System Restore to a date before you used the icon changing program, see if that fixes it.
Sorry for the delay in responding, I was away for a bit.
I would try doing a System Restore to a date before you used the icon changing program, see if that fixes it.
It's not a problem. As for the system restore suggestion: that was one of the first things I tried. I didn't make a system restore point, before my icons got screwed up, so I can't really go back.
You don't have any System Restore points available?
i do, but they're all at points where my icons are changed. The problem is, when I revert to the default, i get those blank icons in my task bar. When I use the other icons, though, my folder icons show in my taskbar, but they're not the default icons, which I want back.
As the icons show as System default icons, please right click C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder, and choose properties, change to the Previous Versions tab, now you can double click the previous versions to check in which version the shortcuts are fine. Then you can choose the version, you can click Restore button to restore.
If there is not a previous version is good, since you have many shortcuts, it would take long time to change the icon associations to the correct one. You can create a new account, then check if the shortcuts in the new account works fine, then you can copy the C:\Users\new account name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs to replace the C:\Users\old account\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder in your older user.
Replace C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs with the path to your Music folder.
For me it's: C:\Users\xxxxxxxx\Music
I tried the "Windows 7 Shortcuts Changing to Default Icon or Disappearing All Together" method, and: 1. the restore point didn't go back far enough .2. When I created a new account my music folder wasn't blank, but it turned into a regular folder. Here's a picture of what I mean in #2:
