Broken or missing icons in Windows 7/8

Q. Some of my Windows icons have disappeared and look like the default application icon. How can I fix this?

Here's an example of what it looks like:

A. This happens because the icon cache gets corrupted. There are several ways to fix this:

Solution #1:

1) Right-click on the desktop and select "Screen Resolution"

2) Under "Advanced Settings" select "Monitor" tab. In the colords drop down select a value other than what you have now (so if it is "True Color 32 bit" select "True Color 16 bit" and vice-versa).

3) Click "Ok" and and the icons should restore themselves.

4) Once the icons appear, you can repeat the steps 1-3 and revert back to whatever value you've had initially.

Solution #2:

You can also just delete the icons database:

1) Open Windows Explorer window and go to: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local

2) Right click on IconCache.db and click on "Delete".

3) Once done, restart your computer. Your icons database will rebuild itself automatically.