Windows 10: Icon Images Missing

Hey guys. I’m new to the whole forum business, so I’m afraid I’m going to require a bit of tolerance, hand-holding and general pointing in the right direction. If my problem has been covered elsewhere, I do apologise, but just point me at it.

The scenario: an Intel i5 laptop running Windows 10 Pro (upgraded from Windows 7 Pro) with four user profiles, one for each member of the family. A reasonably able user who was once a Microsoft Certified Professional, back when Windows NT 4 was big news.

The problem: in two of the profiles, all icons (desktop and otherwise) suddenly began showing titles only and no images. There aren’t even placeholders where the images/thumbnails should be. Image files will not show thumbnails of the images and require third-party software to view.

What I’ve tried:

· Toggling view settings in Explorer. No go.
· Deleting and rebuilding image cache files for the two profiles. No go.

I’m aware that there is a registry hack for this problem in Windows 7, but nothing similar crops up for Windows 10.

Any ideas? Again, if I’m covering well-trodden ground here I do apologise, but I’m at my wits’ end.

:)

 

Start menu tiles are missing their icons

On Windows 10, the tiles in the Start menu for a few apps are missing their icons, as shown in this image:



Sometimes an app tile may be missing altogether.
Is there a way to get the icons back?

 

Icons in the Action centre are missing









The icon menus in the action centre are missing. The Icons are settings are on. How do I fix the missing icons in the action centre?

 

Go to File Explorer > View > Options > Change file and search options > view; Make sure "Always show icons, never thumbnails" is unchecked.

 

Hi Timothy. Yes, I've tried that, no luck! Thanks for the input anyway.

 

Try going to performance options > visual effects; make sure that "show thumbnails instead of icons" is checked.

 

Just tried that, no luck. It seems to tie in with a general Windows malady of late, where things just don't seem to operate as expected. Could it have anything to do with Updates?

 

I had the same problem Dissip and solved it by deleting 5gb of files off my hard drives. Once I cleared that space, my file icon images reappeared!

 

HI, JL91. I've got loads of free space, so I don't think that's it *Smile. Cheers anyway!

 

Thanks, Hope everything works out for you!!!

 

In Windows 10 I have two Microsoft accounts that display things correctly. I created another Microsoft account and a Local account and they will not display graphics (icons and all image files) correctly or not at all. I searched for iconcache files and there are no iconcache files for the new accounts, only for the older accounts. In my custom icons folder the icons are there but only display their names not an image. The icons are only visible via a program like Paint, Internet Explorer, or Photos. I also notice image files only display their names but no image unless openned in a program. The wallpaper image, taskbar icons, start tiles, user account images are displayed correctly. File Explorer has no graphics, only text. Desktop icons are text only.

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Tried many fixes but finally installed a disk image from last month and everything's ok now. I'll never know what was actually wrong.

 

Hi skrambam,

This is the exact same problem I had. I found a solution on a completely unrelated forum and purely by chance. The fault was corrupted system files. This sounds a lot worse than it actually turned out to be, and it was easily fixed. Do the following:

1. Run an elevated command prompt (click on Start, scroll down to "Windows System", click on that to drop the menu; at the top should be "Command Prompt", right-click on that, go to "More" and then click on "Run as administrator").
2. Type the following into the prompt: sfc /scannow (or copy & paste from here). Mind the space between "sfc" and "/scannow".
3. Hit Enter and let the command run. It takes a while to finish.

If there were faults with your system files, this will fix them and stipulate what it did to do so. That would be good, because on your next reboot all will be well with your system and all icon files should be right. If it doesn't find anything wrong with your system files, I'm afraid your problem is not related to mine and you're back to square one.

Good luck with it anyhow.

Just had a thought - your Start menu might not be working, if your problem was the same as mine. You can follow an alternative route to the same result:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. This will bring up Task Manager.
2. From within Task Manager click on File > Run new task
3. Click the box labeled "Create this task with administrative privileges".
4. Type cmd.exe into the Open textfield and then click OK.
5. In the Command Prompt window that opened up, type sfc /scannow and hit Enter.

Good luck!