Windows – Program Icons Missing in Windows 7

google-chromeiconstaskbarwindows 7

I have just received a new laptop, (HP Elitebook 8770w) and I am encountering an odd issue. Icons for a couple of programs are not displaying correctly. The programs currently affected are TeamViewer 9 and Google Chrome.

I have a shortcut to Google Chrome pinned to my taskbar, and TeamViewer is visible as a recent program in my Start Menu. For both of these applications, the respective shortcuts and actually .exe files are showing the Windows generic icon (piece of paper, corner folded, windowed exe in the icon), but the programs work just fine.

I have tried the following:

Manually resetting the icon, by right-clicking and going to properties. When I look at the shortcut properties for Google Chrome, the properties window shows the correct icon. I notice that when I click "Change Icon" I get a message saying "Windows can't find file %ProgramFiles%\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe", which I assume is because I don't have a 64bit version of Chrome, so it's actually in Program Files (x86). I am curious as to why the error is bringing up this path. When I manually browse to the chrome.exe, I can pick the correct icon. However selecting it does nothing.

Deleting the thumbnail cache by running cleanmgr.exe and making sure I am cleaning up thumbnails. After rebooting, the issue was still present.

I have manually deleted the thumbnail cache file (%LocalAppData%\IconCache.db). After rebooting, the issue was still present.

I have changed my color depth to 16bit and then back to 32bit to see if this would clear a thumbnail cache. When I am running in 16bit, the icons actually display correctly, but disappear again when I go back to 32bit.

Also (and this is a bit long winded, so bear with me), if I open Chrome, right click on the icon and unpin it from my taskbar then the icon goes back to normal. While Chrome is open if I right click on the icon, it turns generic.

Can anyone offer any other suggestions to try and fix this? Reinstalls of the programs have not made any change. (I have tried to post images with this question, but I do not have sufficient reputation points to do so).

As for security software, I am running Microsoft Security Essentials, and HP ProtectTools (but only the credential manager is running, I am not using the privacy blocker or device administrator user stuff). Disabling these tools has also made no difference.

Best Answer

  1. Right click on the Chrome icon
  2. Click change icon
  3. After that it will pop up this error %ProgramFiles%\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe after the error it will still bring up icons
  4. Change look for icons in this file to %ProgramFiles% (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
  5. Click ok select the Google icon you want and you're done.