Missing buddy icons

[Tron]

    My buddy icons are not displayed in the Pidgin interface in spite of 
being present in the .purple/icons directory of Windows.  Buddy icons 
are missing for all accounts: ICQ and XMPP (as well as MSN).

There is a 2 year old ticket on this 
(httpsdeveloper.pidgin.imticket12999) but the patch suggested was not 
verified as working and as just a windows user I am not knowledgeable in 
recompiling the code.

I have attempted to empty the icon cash, started Pidgin with the -n 
switch disabled the accounts, changed status to "available" and then 
re-enabled them one at a time but no buddy icons reappeared.

While not critical for the app's operation, the icons did work in the 
past and I was wondering if someone is willing to work on fixing them again?

My Details:
OS:  WinXP sp2
Pidgin ver:  2.10.6