HDD Icon 'Blanked'

Alonzo Mosley · Mar 31, 2026

Dear Internet:

My C:\ drive icon is showing up as a blank document, not the normal HD icon. When I insert external drives, the same issue. Network drives appear to mount with the correct icons. Documents (docx, xlsx, jpg, pdf, etc) all appear okay.

It shows as a blank doc in both Explorer and Ghisler Total Commander.

I noticed on or about 23-March. The only change to my system in the last few weeks was a Beta update on 20-March (26220.8079). It's been consistent since.

I can't find any old autorun.inf copies lingering on my drive.

Icons appear "correct" in Disk Management.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\DefaultIcon defaults to %SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-109

Any help would be... helpful!

Thanks.

glasskuter · Mar 31, 2026

Did you rebuild icon cache. Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 11

Alonzo Mosley · Mar 31, 2026

Yes, sorry, forgot to include I had tried that. I did not try the
ie4uinit.exe -show
command, but I had tried the

Code:

taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
del /A /F /Q "%iconcache%"
start explorer.exe

bits a few times.

(I tried it all again - including the full BAT file - did nothing.)

pseymour · Mar 31, 2026

Does HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\DefaultIcon have a Default value of %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,8?

Alonzo Mosley · Mar 31, 2026

It indeed does. At one point in this past week I tried setting it to imageres.dll,32 as well but now it is back to shell32.dll,8 and my icon is still facacte.

Alonzo Mosley · Apr 2, 2026

New detail - I just noticed that the "broken" icon only appears on Drives that have permanently-assigned letters.

I have an external USB drive that ALWAYS maps to the X:\ drive (and its partition to the Z drive). That, and c:\ , both show as the blank "document" icon.

I just plugged in a different external USB drive - it's been used before, but I let Windows assign it to whatever assigned drive letter it wants (in this case, E: and F:) - and it appears to be OK.

pseymour · Apr 2, 2026

Did you do the DISM/SFC dance to make sure imageres.dll or shell32.dll aren't corrupted?

Also, I see that I have nothing under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons, not even a Default value. I wonder what would happen if you right-clicked that key to export it to a file, and just delete everything inside of it, the default value, any keys belonging to the affected drives (if any exist), etc.

Alonzo Mosley · Apr 2, 2026

pseymour said:
Did you do the DISM/SFC dance to make sure imageres.dll or shell32.dll aren't corrupted?

No I did not! How do I do that dance? Is it the one where I put my right foot in, I take my right foot out, I put my left foot in, and I launch a command prompt as admin and run DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and then sfc /scannow and shake it all about?

pseymour said:
Also, I see that I have nothing under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons, not even a Default value. I wonder what would happen if you right-clicked that key to export it to a file, and just delete everything inside of it, the default value, any keys belonging to the affected drives (if any exist), etc.

Y'all must be following me on reddit. u/ALincoln1865 also suggested that... after suggesting I go to Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 11....

Spoiler alert - that did not work.

Will strap on my dancing shoes and report back in a bit.

KevTech · Apr 2, 2026

Did you try #8 of the rebuild tutorial?

pseymour · Apr 2, 2026

Alonzo Mosley said:
Y'all must be following me on reddit.

Haha, no... I just noticed I don't have anything in that key. I tried to set mine to what you have to see if the icons would go blank, but alas, my computer is awesome and unfazed.

Alonzo Mosley · Apr 3, 2026

KevTech said:
Did you try #8 of the rebuild tutorial?

View attachment 167636

Yes. Did not do anything noticeable. (Just for *.ICO).

pseymour said:
Did you do the DISM/SFC dance to make sure imageres.dll or shell32.dll aren't corrupted?

Yes. Just did both. DISM found nothing, SFC fixed a broken Task Scheduler link...

Alonzo Mosley · Apr 6, 2026

Just installed Version 25H2 (0S Build 26200.8037), and my icons are back. So there you go.

Incidentally, Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons is still blank.

Thanks for trying to help!

HDD Icon 'Blanked'

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