Force rebuild icons cache in Windows Vista

Sometimes Windows' icon cache gets corrupted and you see one mixed up icons in Windows Explorer for different kind of files. The icon cache can be rebuilt using the following process.

1. Start an elevated command prompt. To see how look : how to open an elevated command prompt in Windows Vista.
2. In the elevated command prompt, type the following commands and press Enter after each command :
   cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
   attrib -h iconcache.db
   taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
   del iconcache.db
   start %windir%\explorer.exe

This would close the Windows Explorer, delete the icon cache and again restart the Windows explorer. When Windows Explorer restarts, icon cache would be rebuilt.

This script does what you do manually in the previous method. This script would close the Windows Explorer, delete the icon cache and again restart the Windows explorer. If you are not comfortable with typing all those commands you can download the ready made script from icon_cache_rebuild.zip. Extract the file on your desktop, right-click on the downloaded script file rebuild_icon_cache.cmd and select Run as administrator.