Invisible Taskbar Icons on Windows - But Only Microsoft Store Apps (Solved)

Somewhere during my attempts to fix a broken Google Drive install on my desktop, the icons on my Windows Taskbar all disappeared. Not all of them actually…just the ones for programs installed through the Microsoft Store. I dug into that one, and found that it’s often fixed by…uninstalling Google Drive. *facepalm*

None of these fixed it for me, because Drive was the problem, but I’m collecting them here for future reference.

• Unpinning and re-pinning the affected apps.
• Uninstalling and re-installing the affected apps.
• Clearing the icon and thumbnail caches. I used the command prompt:
  > taskkill /f /im explorer.exe to close explorer in case it’s using the files. (/f forces it to close, and /im tells it the next parameter is the program (or ‘image’) name)
  > cd C:\Users\<myname>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\
> del icon* thumb*
> start explorer.exe to launch explorer again.
• Fixing corrupted files with DISM and SFC.
  > DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
> DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
  Reboot.
  > sfc /scannow
  Reboot again.

Fortunately, once I finally got Drive properly uninstalled, it resolved this problem too – even after reinstalling a fresh copy of Drive.