The Windows 11 icon cache temporarily stores icons to speed up their display. If this cache is corrupted, icons may appear incorrectly, become corrupted, or not display at all.
Rebuilding this cache allows you to resolve these problems. In this guide we offer you a step-by-step guide to carrying out this operation.
Quick method
The quickest method is through Terminal (or Command Prompt) to open using the administrator menu (WIN+X). If a security prompt appears, confirm it then type the following command and execute it by pressing the enter key on the keyboard.
ie4uinit.exe -show
You will not see any confirmation message after running this command. This is normal.
-Advanced method
Another more sophisticated approach is possible. It also goes through a command prompt by running the following commands one by one
- Stop Explorer (temporarily removes taskbar and windows):
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F - Change directory to AppData:
CD %userprofile%AppDataLocal - Delete main cache:
del iconcache.db /a - Change directory to the Explorer folder:
CD %localappdata%MicrosoftWindowsExplorer - Delete all “icocache” files:
del iconcache* /a - Restart Explorer:
start explorer.exe
Note that rebuilding the Windows 11 icon cache does not resolve all issues, particularly with moved or deleted icon files and cases where the application uses an incorrect icon in its own configuration files.
Source : ghacks
