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Common Windows Issues and How I Fix Them

The Windows problems I keep running into and the fixes I keep looking up: rebuilding the icon cache when Explorer shows blank or outdated icons, and why Cryptomator closes itself every time the NVIDIA driver is updated.

October 21, 20264 min readby Artur Rios

This page is a reference rather than an article: problems I have hit on Windows more than once, with the fix written down so I do not have to search for it again. Each entry says what the problem looks like, what is going on underneath, and the steps that solve it. The file locations below were checked on Windows 11 Pro on 21 October 2026.

Blank or outdated icons: rebuilding the icon cache

What it looks like. Explorer, the desktop or the taskbar shows a blank white icon, a generic one, or the old icon of an application that has since been updated.

What is going on. Explorer does not read every icon from its file each time a folder opens. It keeps the icons it has already drawn in a set of cache files and reuses them. When an application changes its icon, or a cache file is damaged, Explorer keeps showing what the cache holds. Deleting the cache makes Explorer draw every icon again from its source.

The cache lives in two places under %LOCALAPPDATA%:

FileWhat it holds
IconCache.dbThe original single icon cache file, a hidden file kept from older versions of Windows
Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache_*.dbOne cache per icon size (iconcache_16.db, iconcache_32.db, iconcache_256.db and so on) plus an index, iconcache_idx.db

Deleting only IconCache.db is the classic fix, but on Windows 10 and 11 most icons come from the per-size files, so both are cleared below.

Try a refresh first

Before deleting anything, ask Windows to refresh the cache. In Windows Terminal, with either Command Prompt or PowerShell:

bat 
ie4uinit.exe -show

If the icons are right after that, there is nothing else to do.

Rebuild the cache

Explorer keeps the cache files open while it runs, so it is stopped before they are deleted and started again afterwards. Stopping Explorer also removes the taskbar and the desktop until it is restarted, so:

  1. Save open work and close all folder windows.

  2. Open Command Prompt (not from a folder window, since Explorer is about to go away) and run, one line at a time:

    bat 
    taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
DEL /A /F /Q "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db"
DEL /A /F /Q "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*"
start explorer.exe

What each part does:

  • taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F stops every process named explorer.exe (/IM is the image name), and /F forces it.
  • DEL /A deletes files whatever their attributes; without it, DEL skips hidden files, and IconCache.db is hidden. /F also deletes read-only files and /Q does not ask for confirmation of the wildcard.
  • start explorer.exe brings back the taskbar and the desktop. Explorer creates new, empty cache files and fills them as icons are drawn, so the first folders opened afterwards can take a moment longer.

If the taskbar does not come back, open Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+Esc, choose Run new task, and run explorer.exe.

Restarting Explorer from Task Manager

When the cache files are already gone or only Explorer needs a restart, Task Manager does it without a command line: open it with Ctrl+Shift+Esc, find Windows Explorer in the Processes tab, right-click it and choose Restart. If a sign-out or a reboot is easier, either one has the same effect.

Cryptomator closes when the NVIDIA driver updates

What it looks like. Every time I update the NVIDIA graphics driver, Cryptomator closes on its own, and every vault it had unlocked disappears with it.

What is going on. Installing a display driver stops the old driver and starts the new one, which resets the graphics device under every application on screen. Most applications redraw and carry on. Cryptomator’s interface is built with JavaFX, which draws through Direct3D on Windows, and a JavaFX application that loses its graphics device can stop instead of recovering. Reports in the Cryptomator community point the same way, tying NVIDIA driver resets and Direct3D errors to Cryptomator crashes, though none of them documents a fix.

The part that matters is the vaults. An unlocked vault is a drive that exists only while Cryptomator is running. When Cryptomator closes, the drive goes with it, and any application that was writing to a file inside it loses that file mid-write.

The fix. Treat a driver update as a reason to close Cryptomator first:

  1. Save and close every file that is open from a vault.
  2. Lock every vault, then quit Cryptomator from its tray icon.
  3. Install the NVIDIA driver update and wait for it to finish, including any screen flicker while the driver restarts.
  4. Start Cryptomator again and unlock the vaults.

If the update has already started with Cryptomator open, wait for the installer to finish before starting Cryptomator again. Starting it while the driver is still being replaced only gets it closed a second time.

Sources

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