Firefox Icon went missing in Windows 7? Here’s a Fix

After installing the latest and greatest Mozilla Firefox 3.5 in Windows 7 (RC 64-bit) I noticed that after a while the icon went missing. Now Firefox was still working correctly, and when I checked the icon properties the icon was still present. But for some strange reason it wouldn’t show up in on my Desktop, my Start Menu, or my Taskbar, I would just see a broken icon.

The resolution? Rebuilding the Windows 7 Icon Cache.

Follow these directions:

Close all folder windows that are currently open.
Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence, or by running taskmgr.exe
In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process
Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.
From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run…)
Type CMD.EXE, and click OK
In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local DEL IconCache.db /a EXIT
In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run…)
Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK.

Your icons should be as good as new!

By Heeren

Comments

Shahid N. Shah August 4th

This was very helpful and fixed my problem, thanks for taking the time to write it up!
Jase August 7th

Thank you very much for this. That was quite annoying.
Jeremy August 10th

Thank you!
Young Hype August 17th

Your a fuckin genius!!!!!!!!!!!!
oozee October 22nd

Thanks it worked!!!!
SaNTi October 23rd

Worked like a charm!

Thanks dude!
m November 1st

simple and effective. Thanks!
Steve November 3rd

This worked for me as well. Thanks!
sarakit November 9th

Wow! It worked!! Thanks for solving this headache!!
Nuno Silva November 11th

Nice! Finally I found this solution!
Nuno Silva November 13th

Hello! I really loved this solution and found out I had to use it often after installing a new application.
So I created a BATCH file in my desktop to do the job with only a double-click.
In the same sharing spirit, just download it if you want.
Rodrigo November 27th

Thanks a bunch! It worked perfectly. I can see my icon is back again. Damn you Windows 7 for playing tricks on us!
Dave December 3rd

You rock!
Dave December 3rd

You rock! Thanks!
Heeren December 4th

Thanks guys for all of the comments! I’m glad this fix has helped!
Lee December 15th

Awesome! Thanks for the help!
greyskull December 17th

well done that man
Loo December 30th

Awesome! Your a fuckin genius!!!!!!!!!!!!
Angelo January 1st

I LOVE YOU!!!
Rudolf January 12th

Could you also point out how the command prompts for CMD.EXE need to be typed in Windows XP please???
Kurbits January 14th

I had this problem not with Firefox but with Mozilla Thunderbird.
This solution made the icon for Thunderbird return. Thanks
I am using Windows 7 professional x64.
J Buzo III January 16th

Wow this worked great!
Although i had to put parenthesis around the Change Directory command:
“CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local”
Command Prompt didn’t accept it the other way.
I have Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit
Thanks!
Dave January 19th

Pure awesome! Worked perfectly for Win 7 Pro 64.
Melissa January 21st

Thank you so much! I’m a real newb when it comes to these things but this made it very easy =)
ihuit January 22nd

buy a mac…
Ryan January 23rd

Thanks! I’ve had problems with a couple other icons doing the same thing and this worked for them too!
holy_ February 2nd

It works!
Nice info and thanks a lot =)
Psiho February 2nd

thx mate, your are the king, solved problem …
Divya February 5th

thanks a lot, it worked! could you explain what was it that caused the icon to disappear?
Emmalee February 16th

Thanks a lot that was so annoying. Thanks again
spooky March 8th

Another thanks here
Markie March 8th

Youre good man
Kiki March 12th

Thank you so much for posting this, Hereen! You’re a life saver. I don’t know how I lost my Firefox & Skype icons, but your fix worked and brought them back. Thank you, much appreciated!
Vin March 17th

Very very helpful! Thanks!
Fernando April 10th

Thank you! I’ve been searching and finally found this! For such a small problem it sure gets annoying.
Chrissy April 13th

wow thank you so much! worked completely! firefox over IE anyday!
mcbain April 13th

Thanks heaps for this. It didnt work through the CMD prompt but i got it by going From “computer> local disk> users> *my username*> AppData> Local, and simply deleting the “iconcache” file. Then i used task manger to delete explorer.exe. Then i straight away reopened explorer.exe and all was good.
Mountianwizard11 April 14th

TGIW (Thank God It Works)
Joel April 14th

WOW! Ill join the chorus…worked perfectly!! Thanks!
Alicia April 15th

Thanks so much for that!
ben April 17th

merci!
victoria ct April 18th

muy bueno jajaj. it was very good thanks (^^)
Rich April 19th

Works like a charm – Many Thanks
Frank April 21st

It worked great!!!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
gabe April 22nd

FANTASTIC!
James Robertson April 25th

Perfect. Thanks
Jason April 30th

God I love you!
FF user April 30th

This was very helpful and instand fixed my problem, thanks for sharing your expertice.
Trauma May 3rd

Very fast and Simple Thanks much man, worked a like a charm.
David May 14th

WHY do we have to do this? I have to do this ever time the icons disappear, which is almost every day. Is there a permanent fix?
spamdetester May 21st

This fixed my issue of missing firefox icons in win7 x64.
Thanks a lot for your help
Dev June 1st

THANKS MATE!!
Teresa June 6th

¡¡¡ g r a c i a s !!!
Yaarik June 7th

Brilliant thanks man
Joe June 9th

Worked for me! Thanks.
Alex June 14th

Thank you very much! This was great help!
Brian June 14th

thanks! worked perfectly =)
Matt June 17th

love ya, thanks

-m
Lex Talionis June 19th

I can’t believe how many people have had this problem. I’m seriously glad I didn’t give up looking for a solution to this. Thank you for figuring it out and sharing it with us. I just got my brand new laptop yesterday and that was the ONLY thing about it that was disappointing.
DeJa June 20th

wow thank you so much, worked! it even works for other missing icons.
D3luSi0n4L June 25th

just like everyone else, this worked flawlessly! Thanks a bunch!
Tiagosarj June 26th

HURhuuuu! thanks!
Bruno June 29th

Superb!! Thanx a lot!!
tnx June 30th

Thank youuuu!!
KP July 3rd

thank you! worked…hope it doesnt come back
jadon July 7th

duuuuuude twas an awesome fix
e.raban July 8th

Helped me out. Thanks a lot, dude!
Jonathan July 11th

Niiiiiiicccccceeeeeee…thank you.
benedict1 July 13th

You are a genius! You’d think MS might just fix this one, wouldn’t you?
Thank you
Carl July 16th

This restored my missing Thunderbird icon in Windows 7. Perfect! Thank you!
doubi July 16th

worked like a charm GOOD LOOKING OUT !!!!!
JoJo July 19th

Great stuff!!!! Worked like a charm. Thanx!!!
Steph A July 23rd

Ahh, thank you.
Adam July 28th

Thanks!
Bayu August 8th

It’s work!… thanks
Adam August 16th

You’re awesome.
ali August 17th

Thanks.
usmc74 August 17th

thanks…..worked like a charm
Zach September 3rd

YOU ARE A GOD, THANK YOU!
aquadonia September 4th

That was AMAZING!!! THANK YOU!!!! *worships the ground you walk on*
c los October 10th

Thank you soooo much !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was going to stop using Firefox because it didn’t have an Icon !!
THANK YOU
Stefan Skrobanski October 11th

Awesome! Thank you!
Arman Dolla October 31st

Worked like magic!
Montanan November 3rd

Thank you SO much for posting this fix. Worked great!!!
Piers November 26th

Just clear the thumbnail cache and reboot
XUEJUNJIE December 4th

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! IT IS JUST HELPFUL.
Joter December 10th

Gracias. Genio!!
Nicho December 16th

Sweet, dude
KP December 20th

Wonderful, that did the trick. You are a super person for sharing this information
Raitei December 25th

Nice.. very simple step by step. Thanks!
The Bro January 2nd

You are an amazing person. I love you so much mang.
matt January 5th

thanks
SMS January 8th

Thank You!!!
Henry January 11th

Thank you for this tidbit of knowledge!
Patikujek January 11th

Super!!! Thank You very much. I was worried that I’ll have to reformat the computer to fix it
Martin January 15th

Thanks; worked as written perfectly for Windows 7 (64bit)
Claudio January 19th

That did it… thank you!!
Tim January 21st

Sweet. From another grateful admirer…
Ron January 25th

The best Windows 7 advise ever!
Tom January 27th

Thank you for saving my a$$ from this little annoyance in life!!!

You made my day!!!
ThanksDude January 28th

its amazing how the only icons to get messed up are from a Microsoft competitor running on a Microsoft OS. I have dozens of other programs and only Firefox and Thunderbird icons went missing. none others…
But hey, thats just me…..
Shiv March 3rd

great help. btw.. I wanna know how did you come up with this solution? I mean are you part of Mr.Softy or some core developer on windows…?
lmgsc March 18th

excelent! simple and elegant.
juzchill March 21st

Thank you so very much for solving this problem, This issue had been very annoying for OCD people like me.
Ivan March 28th

Thanks mate.
You save my day.
Kim April 4th

Thanks…that was driving me nuts!
RK April 11th

Works but there is no explanation of why it happens in the first place and if this will be a “permanent” fix.
Sitaram April 20th

Wow!!!! It worked!!! thanks a lot..
Derrick April 26th

This worked perfectly!! Thanks so much for the fix!

4/26/2011 – Windows 7 Professional
Linscr April 26th

Thank you very much indeed !
dotar April 26th

“I had this problem not with Firefox but with Mozilla Thunderbird.
This solution made the icon for Thunderbird return. Thanks
I am using Windows 7 professional x64.”

This.
Paul April 27th

Thank you
Ryan April 27th

Thank you so much man, you really helped me and many others, especially friends and family. Have a great day.
Stefaan May 9th

Fixed my problem with the skype icon. Thx !
Chris May 14th

Didn’t work for me
Jake May 14th

Thanks – I have my icons back!
Drew June 2nd

Awesome – thanks for the tip. This was driving me nuts!
DH June 16th

Just adding my grateful thanks to this long list!
michael June 26th

Sa-WEET! Thanks.
Wynn June 29th

Perfect!
coothead July 3rd

Thank you Heeren Gandhi for your precise solution to this aggravating little problem.
Roshan July 14th

Worked for me. Thanks, man.
dalkos July 15th

Worked also for me. Thanks
Souri August 7th

Thankssssssssssssss, very easy and perfect solution
Daniel August 9th

Dankeschön! Thx a lot … Tried to do the same without running taskmgr and stopping explorer.exe (did reboot instead) -> didn’t work … but your way dit it
numa_l August 10th

GREAT thanks!!
Shawn Sanchez August 15th

It worked, but I don’t know how: what if Heeren Gandhi is evil and put some malware in the code that will cause problems? I don’t know who Heeren Gandhi is, where he works, and so forth. But, if he is indeed a good guy, then thanks for the solution!
my name is URL August 26th

Just stopping and restarting explorer.exe worked for me.
Eugene Tan August 27th

Thank you very much for taking the time to put this together. It has just worked perfectly for me. Thanks again.
John A. Johnson August 28th

I went to several sites offering unhelpful advice (the worst was to totally reinstall Thunderbird) and was unable to fix this myself. Thank you so much for providing a solution that works!
Joe Linoff September 2nd

Great job. The solution worked perfectly. Than you.
David Wright September 16th

Excellent, thank you!
NeoSephX September 18th

Your the Man!
Priest September 19th

TNX!!!
Rob September 19th

Thank you for sharing this solution!
slabbage September 28th

schweeet.
Patrik Lindström October 1st

Nope does not work. Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. The icon is correct in the program folder but no in the bar. I have even deleted and added it again after rebulding the iconcach.
Adios Muchacho! November 2nd

BOOM!!!
Chris Travis November 8th

Thank you!
Peter November 8th

I am using Windoze 7 Ultimate 32 bit. Your fix was perfect. Thank you.
Dorothy November 12th

Thank you very much for helping me to solve this problem.
Ed November 17th

Thanks a lot!!!!
Mike MG November 19th

Excellent! Thank you
josh November 20th

geez your fuckin genius!!
ECM November 25th

Thanks for the fix. My in-laws have been bugging me about this, and as a Mac user, I was a bit puzzled =)
Surrey December 9th

Thanks a million, friend!
Ricardoatb December 12th

It worked! Thumbs up for you!
yamaha.com review December 20th

This is solution for missing icon of firefox in window seven. I will try to solve this problem that you have provided here. Thanks for this solution. Keep it up
Teddy December 20th

It really worked although I had no idea what the hell I was typing. Thank you.
RC December 28th

Thanks a bunch! Works perfectly!
Gary R January 5th

Fantastic, easy and direct. Thanks!
Phil January 11th

BOOM – worked.

Thanks a ton
K B January 12th

Thank you! You’re a star.
Gerardo January 28th

Thank you!
Rob February 4th

Worked great, thanks! Still would like to know why it happened though. Any ideas?
Miko February 6th

thankyou so so much, i was so frustrated, i just format my laptop and i thought something went wrong that i had to format it again..TAT

thank you <3
Emma February 21st

YYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
thankyou so much!
oneofthemany February 29th

worked great, thanks!
anoop March 2nd

great..thanks…
perrrjantai March 27th

Worked like a charm! Thanks alot dude
jinal March 31st

good man, it worked
Chris April 2nd

YOU MADE MY DAY!!! THANKS A LOT!!!!!!
Will April 29th

Works like a charm in Windows 8 too.
Tracey May 25th

Many thanks!
Pat May 29th

Awesome.
It fixed the issue straight away.
Thanks a lot
ctonia May 30th

thanks man!
Roms June 4th

Thanks, It Worked…
CtF June 4th

Thanks for the fix!
Conor June 21st

Instead of closing explorer.exe you can just pin and then unpin firefox

i.e.
1 – open cmd.exe
2 – CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT
3 – Right Click Firefox Pin it to then taskbar then unpin it
TTrain June 26th

This happened to me during recent update last week. In my case it was showing a installable box icon in place of the globe. I just right clicked on the icon and selected change icon. Selected the right icon and it worked.
Pedro Garcia July 16th

Brilliant thanks
decio July 18th

Finally!!!
Brandon Glenn August 5th

Worked great. Thank you for making the directions so simple!
Reed Gesteland August 7th

awesome fix.
Dennis Langerak August 15th

Thanks man
Greg August 19th

I love you ,to this fix worked great Thanks man
~Bob August 24th

yay!
PrimeroFin August 26th

Worked like a charm! Thanks.

[I did have tweak the CD command line a bit until it found where my profile was]]
Jammin August 31st

Sweet, thanks.
Oraine September 4th

Sweeeeet!!! Thank you so much
Bartosz September 5th

Thank You !
Ted October 1st

Thanks it DID work like a charm:)
Bouras Charalambos October 29th

Thanx for the tip! That was really helpful!
Tan November 17th

Thank you!
matt November 17th

thanks, ur fuckin awesome.
Fritz (~_~) November 21st

It made the Start button the Desktop icons and the Taskbar disappear on my friend’s Win 7 Home. Very Disappointing I am typing this from my computer.
Fritz (~_~) November 21st

It made the Start button, the Desktop icons and the Taskbar disappear on my friend’s Win 7 Home. Very Disappointing I am typing this from my computer.
anon November 24th

you’ve cured my headache. thank you.
Agustin November 25th

Muchas Gracias!! Funciono para mi Win 7 Ultimate
Clare Maclaren November 26th

Many thanks – quick, easy and worked a treat!!
paul November 28th

thanks!!!just great
Alvito December 4th

Worked for me..Super Thanks !!
duongtd December 12th

Many thanks.
Krzysiek December 17th

That is helpful for all icons. Thanks!!!
Yuri January 8th

Nice! Worked! Thanks
Luigi Nabisco January 23rd

awesome
Doug Simpson January 29th

As everyone else has said. This was one great tip. Many thanks. And it taught me tons about some subtleties of Windows. Some thoughts about improving the post below …

Suggest these lines for the CMD work:

cd /d “%userprofile%\AppData\Local”

del IconCache.db /a=s

exit

As someone else mentioned, you need the double quotes in cd command.

And as I discovered, the del a/ needs to be /a=s to delete the system file.

Someone else asked why this is done in CMD line. It’s because killing Explorer process kills your taskbar and Start icon so CMD gives you a way to delete the file. I’m only guessing, but perhaps the idea was that the IconCache.db was being accessed by Explorer and could not be deleted for sure while that process was alive.

Someone else said they were able to do the delete with Explorer. So I don’t know. Maybe that would work every time. Maybe not.

My favorite comment was “Buy a mac.” Why do we keep putting ourselves through all this?
Travis Peters February 13th

Fantastic!
SteelersNation February 21st

Super Duper Thanks!
John Couto February 27th

SIMPLY AMAZING . . . . Work like a charm!
andy March 14th

WOW worked like a charm. 60 seconds to fix.
Thanks March 17th

Nice & EASY
NIKO March 22nd

thank you, awesome
Patrick April 7th

Great tip and an easy fix. Thank for posting!
Kathy April 14th

Thank you so much appreciate you posting this
ming April 16th

thanks you!
insider May 10th

thank you for the post! It was a very annoying issue!
Shanta May 24th

Worked like a charm. Well done!
John June 5th

This not only worked..but brought a smile to my face!
So many weird things happen in windows 7 and windows 8.
I almost switched back to xp.. would if not for the memory limit lol