Forum Discussion
Why do some app icons have black squares on them?
Why have some app icons on my Windows 11 Dell laptop been showing black square spots for the past two weeks? It's only happening to certain apps, not all of them, and I haven't installed anything unusual or changed any settings recently. The laptop is about five years old, running 8GB RAM, an Intel Silver CPU, and UHD 620 graphics.
Is this an icon cache problem, a graphics driver issue, or something that got corrupted after an update? And is there a safe way to fix it without resetting the laptop or reinstalling Windows?
1 Reply
The black squares in your photo sit where the shortcut arrows normally appear. That points more toward a broken shortcut overlay or its icon cache than a graphics hardware problem—especially since ordinary files and folders look unaffected.
Start with Ctrl+Shift+Esc > Task Manager > Windows Explorer > Restart. The desktop and taskbar will briefly disappear and return.
If that doesn’t help, open Command Prompt and run:
ie4uinit.exe -show
That asks Windows to refresh its icons.
If the squares remain, check whether a customisation tool was ever used to hide shortcut arrows, even before this started. Restore its default shortcut-arrow setting and sign out and back in. A missing or invalid replacement arrow icon can produce exactly this kind of black square. There’s no reason to reset Windows based on this symptom alone.
