Adobe Reader icon not showing on Windows 10

some of this worked; but I am still having the issue with the start menu icon; it looks generic.  If i start the program from there it opens with the correct icon which is saved on the taskbar.  When doing the cache clearing (windows 10) I did not get the predicted delete folder; I got the "you cannot delete these files in use" message; also ending the windows explorer process basically turns off everything and I had to force restart with the laptop button.

The cmd line you gave didn't fly either, and I could not have accessed it after killing windows explorer. The copying of the .exe must have helped a little bit.

Hi eddyyang15Nevervana ,

I researched on this issue and found that re-building Icon Cache can fix this issue. Please give it a try.

Rebuild Icon cache in Windows 10

The Icon Cache or IconCache.db is a special database file that Windows utilizes to keep copies of each icon handy. When Windows needs to draw an icon, it uses the copy from the cache instead of retrieving the icon image from the original application file. This helps in making Windows draw the icons faster. Things were different in Windows XP and they are different in Windows 7 / 8. Things changed again Windows 8.1 onwards. In Windows 10, you need to do the following.

If you needed to rebuild the Icon cache in Windows 7 / 8, you needed to do the following: Open File Explorer > Folder Options > Views to show Hidden System Files. Next, go to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local folder and delete the hidden IconCache.db file. Reboot. This action would purge and rebuild the icon cache.

But this is not enough in Windows 10 or Windows 8.1. You will have to navigate to the following folder:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Here you will see a lot of files like iconcache_32.db, iconcache_48.db, iconcache_96.db, iconcache_256.db, iconcache_1024.db, iconcache_1280.db, iconcache_1600.db, iconcache_1920.db, iconcache_2560.db, iconcache_exif.db, iconcache_idx.db, iconcache_sr.db, iconcache_wide.dd, iconcache_wide_alternate.db, etc.

Delete them all to purge and rebuild your icon cache in Windows 10. If you were to be able to delete some of theme, you would now be able to see a new folder created named IconcacheToDelete, which will disappear when you reboot your computer or restart Windows File Explorer.

If you find that you are unable to delete these files, do the following.

First, close all open programs. Next, open Task Manager, look for the process Windows Explorer, right-click on it and select End process. Next, from the File menu > select Run new task. Type cmd.exe, check the Create this task with administrative privileges box and press Enter.

This will open an elevated command prompt window.

Now type the following commands one after the other and hit Enter:

cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer attrib –h iconcache_*.db del iconcache_*.db start explorer

This will rebuild your icon cache in Windows 10.

Check if it fixes the issue.

Regards,

Aadesh

You legend. That solution worked for me. It had been driving me mad!

Same thing here. Adobe Reader DC icon broken on Windows 10 Pro.

The Desktop shortcut icon is showing perfectly but the icon is broken in the start menu.

Very annoying.....

Hi

I can open Adobe Reader from a desktop icon, taskbar, and through the start menu> all apps, but in all instances there is no 'actual' icon but what looks like a placeholder. Please see the image below, the 3 red arrows show what I am talking about.

Thanks for the quick response,

MeableTime