Recently I ran across a problem on my Windows Desktop that I would have thought was related to a beta version of Windows 7. Big mistake on my part. Turns out, sometimes icons get corrupted in your task bar, start menu, or desktop and, well, it's really annoying!
After a few minutes of Googling (which always seems like an eternity) for terms like "Missing Icon," "Broken Icon," "Wrong Icon," etc., I decided to take a screenshot of the icon in question and use Google's super slick "Search by Image" feature. Now, I remember this from back when it was first released and my thought at the time was "Who is ever going to use this?" Turns out, I am when I'm at a loss for words. Dropping my busted-icon-screenshot into Google's Search by Image returned the proper name for this problem: "Unrecognized Icon." Within seconds I found my solution!
Google's super sweet Search by Image aside, if you happen to run into this annoying and frustrating problem, it turns out that the Icon Cache has become corrupted and the fix is to just delete the cache.
- Remove the C:\Users\<youruser>\AppData\Local\IconCache.db file. (This is hidden by default, so make sure you have "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" checked under Folder Options in Windows Explorer.)
- Open up Task Manager and kill off explorer.exe and then start it back up again... or reboot.
Now you know how to respond if a client, co-worker, or family member calls and says that their Win7 icons have changed, disappeared, broken, or otherwise become unrecognizable. Thanks, Google Search by Image!!