All windows icons just...gone ??

Question

ive posted this on the windows 11 help subreddit so i thought id try here too

a while ago i got sick and tired of certain windows icons not showing properly in the taskbar so i went looking for solutions and found this one bit of code someone recommended to run (1st screenshot) but it basically killed all off my icons with no return, none on my desktop and none in file explorer are being displayed. i cant exacly remember but i might have ran it without administrator by accident at first which might be why this happened.

since then ive constantly been trying things to help but nothings worked. one of them being re-running the code as administrator (2nd screenshot) but it says that certain files cant be found, if thats any help. also to note that when i hover over the icons on my desktop its just the text thats selected which makes me wonder if the icons still are somewhere but arent being placed properly.

really any help is appreciated as long as its nothing sketchy or will risk me getting hacked im willing to try anything i beg ;_; i miss my icons and doing anything now is extremely tedious, if its not obvious lol

Answer 1

for anyone else struggling with this turns out it was something to do with regedit, (regedit path: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons), then open a section called "29" and in the data value section paste %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50" then reboot. this was what worked for me after weeks of trying many other things

Answer 2

Hi, thank you for updating and providing the troubleshooting steps you have taken. It will surely help the community.

Answer 3

Hi, I'm Bernard. I'm happy to help!

Based on your inputs and the error you're experiencing, it seems that the system files are corrupted. To sort out the issue, kindly follow the steps below:

Method 1. Repair built-in apps as well as icons.

Open Terminal (Admin) or Windows PowerShell(Admin) (Press Windows key + X then click Terminal(Admin))

Copy, paste, and enter the command below:

Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Then hit Enter. Once the process is done, restart the PC and check.

If the issue persists, I suggest doing an in-place upgrade, which will upgrade the device to the latest version and repair system files without deleting any files.

 

Kindly follow the steps from this link:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-run-in-place-upgrade-in-windows-11/4d469147-2747-4dcb-88a4-aae9273a4500