hello, I have had this problem for a couple of weeks and it bugs the crap out of me. all of the sudden on my brand new pc about half of my desktop icons start out blank on startup. This continues for roughly a minute and then the whole desktop refreshes and they become normal. I am running windows 8.1 and its completely up to date. Every so often when i boot up the desktop will be normal, but that seems to happen about 2 out of 10 times. I have tried deleting the icon cache already. I would greatly appreciate the help. Oh system is  intel 4690k , on asus z97 ar. m.b., samsung 850 evo ssd, 1 tb western digital blue hd.,  8 gb g.skill ram. thankyou.

1. Close all applications or Folders currently open.

2. Launch Task Manager using the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC keys

3. In the Process tab, right-click on the Explorer.exe process and select End Process.

4. Click the End process button when asked for confirmation.

5. From the File menu of Task Manager, select New Task (Run)

6. Type CMD.EXE, and click OK

7. In the Command Prompt window, type the commands one by one and press ENTER after each command:

CD /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
DEL IconCache.db /a
EXIT

8. In Task Manager, click File, select New Task (Run)

9. Type EXPLORER.EXE, and click OK.

Hi jase96,
When did the issue start to occur ?Have you made any modifications or installed any third party software before ?

" I have tried deleting the icon cache already"
How did you clear the cache ?Please take the steps as S.Sengupta suggested to have a check .

Considering this issue happended during the boot up ,I suspect that this issue may be caused by the third party autorun program.We can try to perform a clean boot to have a troubleshoot .
How to perform a clean boot in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135

We also can use the autorun tool to check any suspect autorun program .
Autoruns for Windows v13.2
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

There is another possibility that the present account is corrupted .To check whether it is caused by the specific account profile,we can try to create a new administrator account and login with the new administrator account  to have a check.

Best r