Are the desktop icons missing or have they just disappeared in Windows 10? Well, don't worry as this article will show you several ways to restore missing desktop icons, in most cases everything on the desktop will disappear, the only thing left is the desktop background with the start menu . But how do desktop icons disappear? When the system suddenly shuts down or reboots due to a system crash then either there is something wrong with the explorer.exe process or the desktop icons just get hidden.
Microsoft has introduced a variety of features in Windows 10 and one of them is that you can hide or show desktop icons. To do this, you must right-click on the desktop screen and select "Show desktop icon" to show or hide desktop icons. Anyway, without wasting any time, let's see how to fix Windows 10 missing desktop icons problem with the help of the following tutorial.
Fix missing or missing desktop icon in Windows 10
Make sure to create a restore point in case something goes wrong.
Method 1: Enable Show Desktop Icon
On the desktop, you can easily check whether the desktop icon is visible or not. You just have to click with the right mouse button on an empty area of the desktop that, from the context menu, make sure that the "Desktop Icon" is marked. If it is not checked then click on Show desktop icon and this will resolve missing desktop icon in Windows 10 problem.
Method 2: Change the desktop icon settings
1.Right-click on an empty area of the desktop and then click on the "Personalize" option from the context menu.
2. This will take you to the Personalization Settings window, select "Themes" in the left pane of the window.
3.Now, from the right pane of the window, click "Desktop Icon Settings" under Related Settings.
4. The Desktop Icon Settings window will open, choose the desktop icons you want to display. You must click the checkbox to mark the icons you want to show.
5. Click Apply and then OK to save the changes.
This will make the desktop icons visible on the desktop again. But if you are still facing the problem that the desktop icon is not visible, then follow the next method.
Method 3: Disable full screen startup
If the use of Full Screen Start is enabled, it may be a potential reason for the desktop icon missing on the Windows 10 PC. So in this method, we will only disable the Start Full Screen option in the Settings application. The steps to activate or deactivate the Start Full Screen option are described below:
1.Press Windows key + I to open Settings and then click on the "Personalization" icon.
2.Now in the left window select Start under Personalization settings.
3.Now disable the "Use full screen startup" option.
Method 4: Disable tablet mode
Your system might be stuck in tablet mode due to missing desktop icons in Windows 10. Following are the steps to disable tablet mode in Windows 10:
1.Press Windows key + I to open Settings and then click System.
2.Now under System Settings, select Tablet mode in the left pane of the window.
3.In the drop-down menu "When I sign up" select "Use desktop mode".
4. Make sure to disable the "Hide application icons on the taskbar in tablet mode" option.
Double check if you can fix missing desktop icon in Windows 10 edition or not.
Method 5: Delete the IconCache.db file
If the Iconcache.db file got corrupted in any way, then all the icons might disappear from the desktop. You need to restore this file by following the steps below:
1.Open File Explorer (press Windows key + E hotkey).
2.Now navigate to the following location in the File Explorer address bar:
C:N-Usuarios (Nombre de Username)N-Aplicacion de datos/Local
3.Scroll down and find the "IconCache.db" file in the Local folder.
4.Now right-click on the IconCache.db file and select Delete.
5.Restart your PC to save the changes and Windows will automatically create the IconCache.db file.
Método 6: Reconstruir el cache de iconos
1. Make sure to save all your work and close all current applications or folder windows.
2.Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc together to open Task Manager.
3.Right-click in Windows Explorer and select End Task.
4.Click File and then click Run New Task.
5. Type cmd.exe in the value field and click OK.
6.Now type the following command in cmd and hit Enter after each one:
CD / d % user profile%N-ApDataN-LocalDEL IconCache.db / aEXIT
7.Once all the commands are successful, close the command line.
8.Now open the Task Manager again if you have closed and then click File> Run New Task.
9. Type explorer.exe and click OK. This will restart Windows Explorer and fix the missing Desktop Icons issue.
I hope this article was helpful and that you can now easily fix missing desktop icon in Windows 10, but if you still have any questions about this tutorial, feel free to ask them in the comment section.
