Windows 10: Some desktop icons appear as a blank white file instead of its associated icon

I was having a problem with my Desktop Icons appearing as a blank white file instead of its associated icon as you can see below. Some icons are working normally and some don't.




While I was doing research about this issue, most solutions were mentioning how the icon cache is corrupted. Not in my case though.

The issue actually happens because you are syncing with a OneDrive account and have run out of space. OneDrive, by default, is backing up your Desktop icons for what reason, I don't know as they are non-essential items and it has no more room to save the icon images.


To get the images back, you have to remove the Desktop folder from being synced with OneDrive. Now when I did this, those icons that were missing an image just disappeared and a new Icon appeared on my desktop called "Where are my files". If I open that link, Windows Explorer opened and showed me the full list of desktop icons that were removed and then I just had to cut and paste them back into my Desktop and the images appeared just fine.

:)

 

Two bugs in GPU-Z - icon and version number

I ran into the very same issue with the latest GPU-Z version at Win 10 x64 - I rename the desktop shortcut and after some time I see blank icon for it, and reinstall-rename solution also won't survive restart. The solution I came up with was to extract the icon from GPU-Z and use it instead. This is yet to disappear after multiple restarts.

 

White blank icons on desktop and in program tree.

I have this problem sometimes. It seems the icon cache database is corrupted for some reasons. I use the following steps to restore all white blank icons.

1. Start command prompt (WindowKey + R, type cmd)

2. In command prompt type "cd %userprofile%\appdata\local"

3. In command prompt type "del iconcache.db /a"

4. Start taskmanager (WindowKey + R, type taskmgr)

5. Find Windows Explorer and Right click | End Task

6. In taskmanager select File | New Task then type explorer

You should now fix all white blank icons on desktop.

 

Appended icon in some files in Win7

Looks like this whole icon thing was some kind of explorer.exe bug ,the icon changed to a Diablo 3 icon , after another reboot, it changed back to the windows media "play" icon.

Nevermind ... I remember this bug elsewhere in another situation, happens sometimes when a lot of icons get randomly choosen instead of the correct one.

FIX: because of the permissions inherition when I had the files on my desktop this icon bug happen, when i moved them to the public D: drive, the permissions changed and the problem was fixed.

Win7 always has something to confuse the heck out of you.