Icon cache: what, how? why?

I heard that Windows caches icons.

0) Is it true?

1) What is the advantage of doing so?

2) I have seen several PCs get really confused and start assigning the wrong icon to one or more file types. Is it a file cache issue?

3) How does one dump and rebuild the icon cache?

Thanks in anticipation!

 

Hi Filippo

0: yep
1robably to facilitate a quicker loading of the desktop and icons there and elsewhere

2:I believe so..

3:best to do it manual by either deleting shelliconcache
easy to do then restart the PC ,, its hidden so you have to have marked in folder options to have it shown. anyway on win me doing a search weather hidden of not will show it

There are several programs that would do this also and increase the size to.

best one Ive seen is a simple reg merge to increase size..
then if i have any icon problems I manually delete the cache
Called Icon Cache Fix, here :
http://aumha.org/regfiles.htm
then in folder options ,view, you will have four sizes to choose from.

another way to rebuild the shelliconcach is to change the resolution ,, right click on desktop > properties>
settings and change the color,, on my PC I can change things and it doesn't require a restart, Cant remember if the cache gets rebuilt then or at next startup..

Lonny

 

Exhaustive and to the point!
Thank you!

 

An addition: After yet another bout of Crazy Icon Syndrome I used X-Teq X-Setup general purpose system tweaker to look for icon cache adjustments.

Although I could not find a tweak by browsing the menu, I could easily spot it through the search facility in the program.

One can use it to dump the cache and increase its size from the standard 500 up to 2000 items.

I did that, jacked it up to 1000 items, and icons don't get shown at random (for the time being anyway).