Daily Dev Tips

How to Fix the Windows Terminal Error "Found a profile with an invalid 'icon'. Defaulting that profile to have no icon."

Qualiteg Product Development Team

Mar 16, 2025 — 1 min read

Photo by Gabriel Heinzer / Unsplash

This is an issue I have run into a few times after repeatedly installing and removing various versions of Linux on WSL.

Encountered errors while loading user settings

Found a profile with an invalid "icon". Defaulting that profile to have no icon. Make sure when setting an "icon", the value is a valid file path to an image.

This post is a report on the cause of this error and how to fix it.

Cause

A no-longer-used "zombie" profile remains behind in Windows Terminal (in its cache).

Fix

To get rid of this message, I had to reset the profiles once.

Note: be aware that your existing profile settings may be lost.

Step 1: Close Windows Terminal

Close all Windows Terminal windows completely.

Step 2: Delete settings.json

In File Explorer, navigate to the folder containing settings.json and delete the file.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\

Step 3: Clear the Windows Terminal "cache"

Open the following folder and delete all files inside it.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Terminal\

Step 4: Restart Windows Terminal

After restarting Windows Terminal, the zombie profile was gone and the error disappeared as well.

Building a Coding Agent from Scratch, Part 3: Count Idle Turns, and Cap the Thinking Without Cutting It

Building a Coding Agent from Scratch, Part 3: "It Didn't Stop" Is Not "It Made Progress." Count Idle Turns, and Cap the Thinking Without Cutting It

300 turns, zero APIs. Re-reading the log showed 234 turns had never called a tool. We cover the idle rate as a metric, idling that shifts form each time one is closed, how turning thinking off dropped 95 to 71 without saving time, and counting the other side after widening the output window.

Ubuntu's Automatic Updates Bumped the Kernel Alone, and the GPU Vanished After a Reboot: Why the NVIDIA Module Gets Left Behind, and Three Ways to Prevent It

Reboot an Ubuntu 24.04 GPU server and nvidia-smi stops working. The cause: unattended-upgrades updated the kernel alone and skipped the NVIDIA module over a dependency it could not resolve. How we traced it in the logs, recovered with one install, and compared three fixes including apt-mark hold.

Building a Coding Agent from Scratch, Part 2: The Completion Gate and What to Write in a Pushback

Building a Coding Agent from Scratch, Part 2: "Done" Means "It Runs," Not "It's Written." The Completion Gate and What to Write in a Pushback

The model's "Done" slipped through in five ways, from a bare syntax check to tests with no assert. We describe, with numbers, a completion gate that closes in three stages, and why a pushback should contain the failing lines and how to investigate, but never the answer.

Jev by TypeSafe AI: What It Is and How Well It Works, Measured Over 301 API Calls

Jev returns typed decisions instead of text. Signups reopened on September 28 with no free credit for direct accounts. We put $10 in, called it 301 times from Python, and measured accuracy on Japanese tickets, guardrails and command approval, plus response time and cost (about one yen).