Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache

The icon cache of Windows is responsible for displaying the correct icons of your files. If your icons aren't shown or haven't been changed after updating applications with new icons, then it's necessary to empty and build it again.

This can be done without turning to third-party programs but it requires a bit of patience and research to find out the steps you have to take. If you don't want to take the risk of accidentally tinkering other system settings, then you can resort to Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache.

As the name of this tool suggests, its purpose is to rebuild the icon cache so that your icons are properly displayed. It features a backup module to give you the possibility to restore the previous settings if something goes wrong after attempting to repair the icon cache.

Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache is wrapped in a single file of small size, which requires administrator rights to work because it makes modifications to the Windows registry. There is no installation file involved, so you can just double-click the .exe to bring up the main app window.

Since it's portable software, the icon cache cleaner can be copied onto a thumb drive and effortlessly launched on any PC, as long as you have admin privileges.

The control panel of Purge & Rebuild The Icon Cache is tiny and has two buttons: one in charge of rebuilding the icon cache, which automatically creates a backup before completing the operation, and another for restoring the icon cache from a former backup.

A confirmation message should pop up on the screen after each of these tasks. If you attempt to restore the icon cache before first creating a backup, you will receive an error.