Desktop Icons Flashing

Question

Every 5 seconds my desktop icons revert to the deafult 'Blank' icon.  Like the white page.  and than go right back to normal.  I am not installing anything, and no virus scans are going.

Windos 7 64bitAero Enabled

Answer 1

I had similar symptoms as reported here: desktop icons flashing every 4-5 minutes. Have Windows 7 64-bit OS, 2 video cards (one dual monitor, one single). When icons flash, its visually a cascade, going across 3 monitors. Very annoying. I had WebEx Desktop installed as well. Uninstalling it did not solve the problem for me. I found another solution that worked. No more flashing icons. In summary: The procedure is to terminate the Explorer.exe process, remove IconCache.db, and restart Explorer.exe.

1. Open Windows Explorer. Go to %userprofile%\AppData\Local
2. Make sure Show Hidden Files is enabled. Change Properties for IconCache.db so that its not Hidden. (so that its visible in step 7 below). Close Windows Explorer.
3. Open Task Manager (to be used in Step 6)
4. Open Command prompt
5. CD to %userprofile%\AppData\Local. DIR should show IconCache.db in the folder.
6. In the Task Manager window, sort by application, and click on Explorer.exe. Click on End Process. Make sure no Explorer processes are running. Your Start button and Taskbar will disappear.
7. In the Command prompt window, delete the IconCache.db file: DEL IconCache.db
8. In the Command prompt window, restart Explorer by entering "Explorer". The Start button and Taskbar should re-appear.

Alternative is to do a shutdown /r in the Command Prompt after removing IconCache.db to restart your PC.

Hopefully when done, no more flashing icons.

Answer 2

I finally solved my problem of flashing icons. I started uninstalling applications I added to my machine. When I uninstalled WebEx Desktop productivity tools the flashing icons went away for good it seems.

Answer 3

Every 5 seconds my desktop icons revert to the deafult 'Blank' icon.  Like the white page.  and than go right back to normal.  I am not installing anything, and no virus scans are going.

 

Windos 7 64bitAero Enabled

Hi

Here are some things you can try.

In Control Panel, (icon view) select 'Troubleshooting'. Under Appearance and Personalization, select the Display Aero desktop effects.

In the resulting window, select the Advanced link at the bottom of the window and place a check mark in the Apply repairs automatically option. 

Click the Next Button. 

If the troubleshooter does not find any problems, select the Explore additional options button.

Select the Recovery Link.

Click the System Restore button.

Click the Next Button.

Select a Restore Point with a date just prior to when you first noticed this behavior.

Click the Next Button and follow the instructions to restore the system to that date and time.

Let us know the results.

Thank You for using Windows 7

---

Ronnie Vernon MVP

Answer 4

But what if you rely on the WebEx Productivity Tools? Has anyone that unsinstalled it successfully re-installed it?

I found two solutions to this problem if you need to use WebEx tools:

1. Go to Start, Control Panel, Unintall Program, instead of uninstalling, you can just right mouse click to Repair

or

2. Go to WebEx One-click icon, right mouse click, WebEx setting, don's need to change anything, just click OK, then it will say Communication with Server, Please Wait. It will close automatically when done, then the icon blinking will be gone.  This is the quickest way to fix the issue.

If anyone knows a way to permanently resolve the issue, please let us know.

Answer 5

I followed those instructions and my icons are still blinking every 2-3 seconds.