My PC has literally no icons!

Ok, one day I boot up my pc, and all my icons are just gone; shortcuts, files, folders, drives, everything. Also, I don't mean I only have generic icons. I mean I actually have no icons.

Also, missing icons aren't the only issue. You know that arrow button that let's you go back a few folders? That doesn't work anymore.

I've also discovered another symptom recently. I went to download an updated version of a program. It displayed a list of options to check, or at least it tried to. The first option was visible, but the rest were not. Now this visual glitch is actually interfering with my work.

OS is Win 10 Pro x64. Video drivers are from AMD and should be up to date.


Things I've done:

I've tried restarting explorer and even the whole pc. No joy.

Then I remembered having a somewhat similar desktop issue fixed by resetting some reg keys. I reset all the reg keys I changed. Problem still persists.

Then I did some googling. I found a series of commands that are supposed to reset an icon cache. I tried them, and that doesn't work either.

Further googling only shows how to toggle desktop icons...

At this point, I'm seriously thinking I'll have to do the nuclear option. Please post any, crazy alternatives you may have. I never had this problem till a couple days ago, and I didn't change any settings recently or install any new programs.

It's very likely a registry issue and even more likely confined to your user profile. Try creating a new user account (set it as an administrator) and login as that new user. If that new account works fine, then it's confirmed it's an issue with your profile. You can then spend hours trying to figure out what specific registry entries are messed up or just use the new account (and, of course, move your files from the old account to the new account).

Right-Click on an empty space on desktop -> View -> Make sure last option is enabled (show icons on desktop).