Desktop Icon Madness (XP)

January 23, 2005

Okay. I installed a theme for my desktop. Wallpaper, folder icons, sounds, the works. Well, it turns out that I didn’t like the theme. So, I tried to return to the standard Windows XP theme.

Everything reverted back, except for the folder icons. Somehow, they were still displaying the picture from the theme I removed. I tried resetting the advanced properties for the folder, but no matter what, the unwanted icon was still there. And, it was showing up for all the user accounts on my computer — not just mine.

As it turns out, the unwanted icon was cached. There is an icon cache file for Windows XP that can be deleted. It will regenerate itself later. The icon cache is primarily used to increase the speed at which the Desktop loads.

To find this file, you have to look for a hidden file called: iconcache.db. It is found within the user account path DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGSUSERACCOUNTLOCAL SETTINGSAPPLICATION DATA.

Since this unwanted icon was appearing for all the users on my machine, I performed a general search for the file on my hard drive (including hidden folders) and then I just deleted them all.

Finally, I have my happy yellow folder icon again!