Windows 10: Windows 10 context menu icons missing, turned to square.

Hello folks,

a picture says more than a thousand words, so I put a screen capture in here, and circled the offending squares. This was taken on a right click menu from windows explorer. There should be icons, like a > or some other icons instead. Most icons are still there, as seen in the screenshot, but some are missing. The missing ones appear to be Windows system icons to me.

Before posting, I did my research and tried 3 different things:
1. Rebuild iconcache
2. Change scaling
3. New user account

1.: Rebuilding the icon cache in windows.
To do so I first switched manually into the folder %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\, killed task manager and deleted anything called iconcache* using powershell. All files called iconcache were gone, I checked and rebooted. No change. I tried again and used the following commands as an administrator.
ie4uinit.exe -show
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db"
DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*"
shutdown /r /f /t 00

The commands worked just fine as far as I can tell (used it as a batch file, ran as an administrator, it executed and rebooted) but did not change anything about the icons. Squares are still showing.

2.: Setting a different scaling for windows display options, from 150% to 125%, also this did not restore the icons.

3.: Logging into some other user accounts, including one which was brand new and never used. Windows put me through the "getting ready for you" to set up the new profile. They all behaved the same way.

Because Windows is still usable in this condition, I probably didn't focus on this and don't know exactly when this has occurred for the first time. I may have used CCleaner which is known to break stuff.

There is no problem with thumbnails or start menu icons. The problem occurs when using the context menu, and in some programs which probably draw from windows icon ressources. Also in windows explorer search, the magnifying glass is a square until I click into the search field, when it becomes a magnifying glass again. Strange.






Can this be fixed without having to refresh Windows? It is bothering me, but not enough to re-configure windows and every program in it.

My Windows is W10 Pro 64 Bit 1909 build 18363.1016

Thank you for any hints!

:)

 

missing icons in start menu

Hi Wickiwizard,

It is possible that the icon of your apps in Start menu is missing due to a corrupted system files. To provide you the accurate resolution, kindly answer the following questions:

• Have you made any recent changes prior to this issue?
• Does this happen only with icons in Start menu?
• What troubleshooting steps you've done so far?

Meanwhile, we suggest that you perform the steps in this
article on how to troubleshoot problems with Start menu or Cortana.

If the issue still persists, we recommend that you follow the suggestion shared by
Meliton Dec on this thread.
The given troubleshooting steps will help repair or reset not only missing apps but also lost icon.

Keep us posted if you need additional help.

 

Icons in the squares of Start menu






Icons in some of the squares of start menu are missing.

How to make them appear?

 

Context Menu Arrows Missing - Start Menu Program Icons Missing

Ive tried sfc /scannow

Iconcache dump

any other ideas to reset system shell icons and fix the missing program icons in the start menu

In the context menu there should be an arrow to sub menu but it cant find the arrow icon []