A blank Icon after an Internet Explorer upgrade

Every once in a while, when we upgrade Internet Explorer, an issue arises where the icon turns into the blank default icon instead of changing to the new one.

I’ll add a screenshot the next time I run into it, but here is the answer for going from ie6 to ie7.  I have only seen this happen going from ie7 to ie8 a couple of times and only in XP.  The same resolution seems to work in that case as well.

Go into the registry and look for the registry key…

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\IEXPLORE.EXE\DefaultIcon

I’ll bet yours looks as mine did and has…

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe,-7.

What it should be is…

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe,-32528

Reboot, or simply remove and readd the icon from the start menu.

Problem solved.

I don’t know why it happens as I have never looked into it, but I know this has fixed it every time.