Windows 10 icons turn generic

Question

_{Thursday, August 11, 2016 4:41 PM}

This is a new laptop with Windows 10 installed from Dell, haven't had it a week yet.  When I put shortcuts on the quicklaunch toolbar, they shortly turn into generic document icons (screenshot attached). This issue also bleeds over to the taskbar icons for running apps.  I'm completely patched and up to date, so I don't know what is causing this.  If I disable the Quicklaunch, the problem persists.  I haven't seen it anywhere else, just the quicklaunch and taskbar.  Has anyone else seen this?

Edit to add:  I've tried a few procedures online to rebuild the icon cache, but that hasn't had any affect.

All replies (6)

_{Friday, August 26, 2016 6:35 PM ✅Answered}

I've discovered WHAT'S wrong, but I don't know any way to "fix" other than a fairly painful workaround.  In Windows 10, when you drag an icon from the start bar to the quicklaunch bar it creates a shortcut, obviously.  But for some apps it doesn't create a "real" shortcut, but some kind of strange pointer that looks like this:

Since the target is not a real path, quicklaunch can't find it (or the icon).  So, there are two workarounds.  Click "Change Icon" and hunt for the icon file or delete the bad shortcut and create a real one from the executable.

So thanks, MS, for taking a great feature and pretty much ruining it.

_{Friday, August 12, 2016 12:54 AM}

What happens if you create another user account and do the same?

S.Sengupta, Windows Insider MVP

_{Friday, August 12, 2016 1:43 AM | 1 vote}

Hi ptierney,

Enable the "show hidden file" option of Windows Explorer and navigate to this location "%userprofile%\AppData\Local
", delete "IconCache.db", restart "Windows Explorer" process from task manager.

If the issue persists, try to create a new account.

Best regards

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_{Friday, August 12, 2016 12:11 PM}

S.Sengupta

I haven't tried that yet.  This is an AD account, so it's problematic for me to just work as someone else for awhile.  I may try to suffer through that if I can't fix it otherwise.

_{Friday, August 12, 2016 12:15 PM}

MeipoXu

I performed a similar procedure where I closed all apps, ran task manager, quit explorer, opened a CMD prompt, cd'd to that dir and deleted the file.  Then I restarted explorer via task manager.  No change.  Looks like I might just have to recreate my profile.

_{Tuesday, August 16, 2016 7:16 AM}

Hi,

How about the issue, is there anything to update?

Best regards

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