Why do some taskbar icons appear as white rectangles with a blue square?

Question

Why do some taskbar icons appear as white rectangles with a blue square?

Carl Santillo 20

Windows 11 Pro -- several taskbar icons appear as white rectangles with a blue square?

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Richard Trinidad 6,330 Independent Advisor

Hi thanks for posting to Microsoft community mate, it looks like the issue is caused by a broken icon cache or registry settings for icons

Have you tried to Unpin and Re pin Icons, simply right click the problematic icon then unpin from taskbar then open the app again then right click its icon then Pin to taskbar.

Also to better understand, did this start happening after a Windows update or after installing/uninstalling any software? That will help narrow down whether it’s a cache issue or a registry handler problem.

Let me know how it goes

Chard

0 comments

1 additional answer

Your answer

Answer 1

The appearance of taskbar icons as white rectangles with a blue square in Windows 11 can indicate issues related to the icon cache or the application shortcuts themselves. This problem can occur when the icon cache becomes corrupted or when there are issues with the IconHandler subkey in the Windows registry.

To resolve this issue, you can try the following steps:

Clear the icon cache: This can be done by ending the Windows Explorer process and deleting the IconCache.db file from the local AppData folder. After that, restart Windows Explorer.
Check the IconHandler registry settings: Ensure that the values in the registry for the IconHandler subkey are correct. This includes verifying the (Default) value and ensuring it points to the correct CLSID and InProcServer32 values.

By following these steps, you should be able to restore the display of your taskbar icons.