How to Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 10 (White Icons on Desktop)

This video will show you how to rebuild the item cache in Windows 10 and fix blank white icons on the desktop that have become corrupted.

1. Press the windows key + r to bring up the run menu and type %appdata% and press ok.

2. This will take you to the roaming data folder and you will need to go back a folder and open up the local folder, press the view button on the top and show hidden items.

3. Now delete the IconCache and empty the recycle bin.

4. Restart the pc (may take longer due to rebuild of file) and check in the local appdata file to see if the IconCache has been replaced.

Method 2:

1. Close all explorer windows that are open
2. launch taskmanager using ctrl+shift+esc 3. In the process tap, right click on the explorer.exe process and end process. 4. From the file menu select new task and type cmd.exe and press ok. 5. Now in command prompt type the following line by line and hit enter:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local

DEL IconCache.db /a

EXIT

6.Now in task manager select file and new task.

7. Type explorer.exe and click ok

8. You may need to refresh the desktop and the best way to do this is to click on your desktop background and press F5 which will refresh.

I am not responsible for anything that happens on your machine and these tutorials are to be used at your own risk. If in doubt contact an IT professional.

Comments

[SmartestIdiot]

You can just type %localappdata% in the RUN dialog instead of typing %appdata% and going back.

[KenryuB]

this didn't work for use, and neither did a myriad of other answers but I wanted to share our fix, so others can know about it if they are searching today in the 2019 1709 WIN10 era.

I googled searched, Windows 10 desktop icons all white. In our enterprise, we had all the icons on desktops go white, inclduing on start menus and task bar. NOT one fix we could google fixed this issue. .dbcache rebuilds, thumbnail rebuilds, powershell fixes, reupdating all programs. The only fix most people settled on was a PC reset or reinstall.

Note this is on Enterprise WIN10 1709 the 30month supported version, so NO at this time updating to another version isn't an acceptable option (even though thats what MS will tell you if you go that route).

We finally figured out the solution though. If you are having the same issue then try this.
I had go to spiceworkds via this thread

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1973227-windows-10-desktop-icons-white and none of those worked for me either.

Open regedit, and go to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile\shellex\IconHandler]

If your only thing in iconhandler folder is (defualt) and the value is set to : {86073620-2903-4112-8B55-6FCFCD1A8A4B} That is your problem. It is a known issue with 1709 but interestingly we couldn't find it online.
Change the value to {00021401-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

and reboot.