Fix Windows 10/11 Icons Not Showing Up / Working as Expected

Alas, another Windows bug that seems to have stood the test of time. If only this were a feature instead of a bug! Maybe that’s how we should look at it….

Behold, a bug!

On occasion I will have a minor bug occur with Windows — the icon for a particular file type isn’t showing up — just a white blank rectangle instead.

There are three things you can do to fix this. The first two are well documented around the net. The other, not so much.

Three fixes:

1. Run IE4uinit
2. Delete IconCache files
3. Remove the registry keys related to the file type and then have Windows rebuild it.

Fix #1 and #2 are explained on this page. Try doing these first.

If neither of those fixes work, here is another fix that has worked for me several times…

This method involves deleting the file type, then letting Windows rebuild the needed registry keys. Nothing major, and worst case we can always undo the change.

Before doing this, I recommend making System Restore point, even though we’ll be making a backup of the registry keys themselves.

I’m using .xyz as an example file type below. Your file type might be .jpg or .png or .mkv, etc. If you can’t see the extensions on files in Windows, turn that on.

Warning: if you are unfamiliar with the registry editor, please note that you must be very careful — editing or deleting the wrong key can cause problems, so kindly ready closely 😊.

• Open the Registry Editor
• Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xyz where .xyz is the extension you want to fix
• Click on that key — .xyz — then click File > Export > TypeBackup_xyz > press enter
• That will make a backup — if for some reason something goes wrong, navigate to this file, run it, and it will restore the registry key
• Right-click on the .xyz key (ensure you have selected the .xyz key and NOT anything else), then hit Delete, then yes
• Now navigate to (you can just copy-paste this into the navigation bar)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts

• Under the FileExts key you will have a list of extensions as subkeys
• Find your extension, such as

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.xyz

• Click on that key — .xyz — then click File > Export > TypeBackup2_xyz > press enter
• Right-click on the .xyz key (ensure you have selected the .xyz key and NOT anything else), then hit Delete, then yes
• Close out of all Windows except for your web browser
• Open a folder with a file that ends in .xyz and open it, it will ask what program to use to open .xyz files
• Select a program, hit OK
• That will force Windows to rebuild the registry keys for that file extension

If anything went wrong and you want to go back, just find the Backup_xyz and Backup2_xyz files and open each of them to restore. If something really bad happened, you can go back in time to that System Restore point you created. As long as you followed the instructions verbatim, you won’t have anything go wrong, 😊

You may need to repeat

Have a great day!

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