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All my html files have a blank icon.

jimweinberg
jimweinberg
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My html files used to have a small Firefox icon associated with them. Suddenly, they all have a blank icon (like a text file icon without the lines). The files, themselves, are fine and if clicked on they open in Firefox the way they're supposed to, but the file icons are wrong. If I change the Open With application to IE or Chrome or Safari, they have the correct associated icon. But when I switch them back to Firefox, the icons are blank. How can I fix this and stop it from happening again?

BTW, I'm running Firefox 44.0.2 on a Windows 64bit machine. One other comment. If I uninstall and then reinstall Firefox, the file icons are correct. I'm sorry, but this is not a solution. I need something more permanent.

Thanks in advance for your assistance in this matter.

My html files used to have a small Firefox icon associated with them. Suddenly, they all have a blank icon (like a text file icon without the lines). The files, themselves, are fine and if clicked on they open in Firefox the way they're supposed to, but the file icons are wrong. If I change the Open With application to IE or Chrome or Safari, they have the correct associated icon. But when I switch them back to Firefox, the icons are blank. How can I fix this and stop it from happening again? BTW, I'm running Firefox 44.0.2 on a Windows 64bit machine. One other comment. If I uninstall and then reinstall Firefox, the file icons are correct. I'm sorry, but this is not a solution. I need something more permanent. Thanks in advance for your assistance in this matter.

All Replies (4)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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You can check for issues with the Windows icon cache.

Try to rebuild the icon cache (IconCache.db).

  1. Open the Task Manager (Shift+Ctrl+ESC)
  2. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.
  3. Open the file picker via "File > New Task (Run)" and click the Browse button.
  4. Type or Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local (%LocalAppData%) in the File name field (AppData is a hidden folder).
  5. Select the IconCache.db file and use "Delete" in the right-click context menu to delete the file.
  6. After the IconCache.db file has been deleted, start a new explorer.exe process via "File > New Task" to get the desktop and Taskbar back.

The IconCache.db file is a hidden file, so make sure that you can see hidden files.

jimweinberg
jimweinberg Question owner
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Went through the steps you suggested. Got an "invalid filename" in step 4. Used a search utility I have to locate the IconCache.db file. Went back through you steps. Located the file in step 4 and deleted it. Re-enabled the desktop. Html files still had blank icons. Restarted my computer. Problem still exists. Remember, these are html files, not shortcuts.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Did you try to change the icon via the properties of the desktop icons?

jimweinberg
jimweinberg Question owner
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I can only do that for shortcuts. The shortcut icons are fine. This is not a shortcut problem. This has to do with actual file icons. So, no, that doesn't solve the problem.