Taskbar Icons Broken: Windows 10

[Jonas]

Out of nowhere, the icons on my taskbar are broken:

I did perform a system restore a few days ago as Windows was selecting my soundbar as the primary display, and I couldn't get to change it to use my monitor. I am not sure if the icons were broken prior or post system restore. What I have done so far:

1. Unpinned the icons and pinned them again.
2. Manually restarted Windows Explorer.
3. Restarted my PC a few times.

 

[Sushubh]

try deleting app icon cache. ccleaner type apps should have an internal option. or you can find the location and delete them manually perhaps.

 

[Jonas]

Deleted it from:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Some of them reappeared, but some are still broken such as Audacity. Will repeat this after the reboot.

 

[Sushubh]

google backup and sync is also known to fuck up app icons on windows. not sure if they fixed it yet.

 

[mikrotik]

Which are those for which icons are broken?

 

[Jonas]

I deleted most of them from the taskbar while being annoyed.

Premiere and Audacity are still broken.

 

[SpeedxThunder]

you can do a in-place upgrade to fix those icons

 

[SpeedxThunder]

you can use UUP dump to create the latest Windows iso

 

[Jonas]

In the last 10 years I’ve reinstalled the OS only once when the OS became corrupted beyond repair in 2019 a few months before lockdown. I think it happened due to the failing hard drive. It could’ve been the corrupted bluetooth driver.

I always avoid making any changes to the OS except for the Windows updates.

 

[SpeedxThunder]

no, you do not need to reinstall Windows, an in-place upgrade will just update all the corrupted files and dll and that's it

yesterday I did an in-place upgrade in one of my system on which I wasn't able to install/upgrade from ms store and that fixed the issue