Windows icons malfunctioning

[Cap Ologist]

Not sure what happened to my laptop, last night when I went to bed everything was fine. This morning, the icons for IE and Outlook on my desktop aren't showing correctly. They still work, they just look like a generic file, if that makes sense. Also, the icons on the Start Menu for the most frequently run programs are doing the same thing. I removed one from the list, and the icon for the replacement program works fine. They also show up correctly on the traditional start menu side where all the programs are listed.

I can't find anything online to help, any clues what the hell happened here? Running XP btw.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Have you rebooted to see if everything goes back to normal?

If I'm reading what you're describing correctly, I see this pretty commonly on at least one of my pc's and a reboot always clears it up.

[Cap Ologist]

I've rebooted several times, and it's not fixing itself. I've done a spyware, adware and virus scan as well.

[mauchow]

I've had that happen.

The reason mine did though was because it was installed for network use and when I unplug from a network, it goes away. I believe that's why mine happened. I re-installed it, came back for one day and went back to the white page you're talking about.

[Cap Ologist]

Here's a linkie to what I'm talking about.

http://img264.imageshack.us/my.php?image=desktopxn0.png

http://img525.imageshack.us/my.php?image=startmenuvt7.png

[Cap Ologist]

Somehow I stumbled into a solution.

Display -> Appearance -> Effects

Then toggled from small icons to large icons back to small and it works.