Windows Vista/7 Icon Cache

I seem to have a problem corrupting the icon cache in Windows Vista, and now Windows 7. For some reason shortcuts on my start menu, desktop, and in Windows Explorer occasionally do not display correctly (the generic shortcut icon is displayed, or a random icon from the iexplore.exe assembly). After living with this pain for some time, I finally found the solution in this terse article appropriately titled “How to Rebuild the Icon Cache in Windows Vista and Windows 7“.