Microsoft's Task Bar Icons have a white background after Windows 10 update

Hello,

Thank you for posting your concern here in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

From the description of the issue, I understand that you are facing issues with several functionalities in Windows 10.

Before proceeding, please check if the same issue occur when logged in through a different user account.

Ref: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-set-up-accounts

Please follow the below suggested methods and check if it helps.

Method 1

Please follow the below steps to rebuild the icon cache in Windows.

The Icon Cache or IconCache.db is a special database file that Windows utilizes to keep copies of each icon handy. When Windows needs to draw an icon, it uses the copy from the cache instead of retrieving the icon image from the original application file.

1. Navigate to the following folder: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

2. In order to rebuild icon cache, you have to remove all iconcache files that you see in this folder.

Note: Windows cannot remove all the iconcache files because few of them will be active in the File Explorer. Hence, Windows cannot delete the files that are still active. And to delete the files, you need to close the File Explorer.

Close the active File Explorer. To close File Explorer do the following steps –

• Execute a right click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager option.

• Take yourself to the Details tab.
• Look for explorer.exe in the Details tab.
• Right click on it and hit select End task option.

3. Press Windows key + X, select Command prompt (Admin) to bring up elevated Command prompt and type del iconcache*. This will delete all the iconcache files.

4. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del keys from the keyboard and choose the sign out option.

5. Sign in to Windows 10 and check if the above steps produced a positive effect on the icons.

Method 2

This issue may happen due to system file corruption. I suggest you to run System file checker. System File checker (SFC) scan is done to check if there are any corrupted system files that could be causing this issue. Kindly follow the below given steps:

• Press Windows key + X, select Command prompt (Admin) to bring up elevated Command prompt.

• In Command prompt type sfc/scannow and press enter.

Restart the computer.

If no corrupted system files were found in the previous state, then I suggest you to try the following steps: 

• Open command prompt by pressing Windows key + X and selecting “Command prompt admin”.

• In command prompt, type the following commands and press Enter after each command:

                DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

                DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

• Close the command prompt and restart the PC and check if it works.

Hope the above information was helpful. If you need further assistance, please do let us know and we would be happy to help you further.

Thank You.

There are two mistakes in Method 1 instructions above:

1) Windows key + X does not work after end explorer.exe - I suggest having the Command prompt (Admin) open before doing so.

2) After opening the Command prompt (Admin), typing del iconcache* returns "Could Not Find C:\WINDOWS\system32\iconcache*" - I suggest changing the directory first:

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

EDIT:

This method did not work for me, but 2 of the files where not deleted due to having the access denied:

iconcache_16.db

iconcache_idx.db

I was able to get the files deleted and explorer was not responding after I rebooted, though it loaded after another reboot, but I still have the messed up icons on the taskbar only.

UPDATE:

Method 2 did not work fix the icons.

So after Method 2 failed to fix the issue I went back to the first step of creating a different user (which I had already done and shown the result in my first post) and this time the new users taskbar does not have the icon issue.

What would be the next step of converting my current account to a new account? I would want to have all of my files and my MS account attached to it, including my OneDrive and programs like Outlook without any permission issues. 

Ideally I would like to have the same user name user folder name that I am currently using