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I  am using Dell Inspiron 1420 Laptop with Vista Business Core2 Duo/2GB Ram. Recently all my desktop shortcut icons except Recycle Bin were blocked by another imageless icons (individually) similar to the first icon from the file Change Icon (c:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll).

The software of the icons still works when clicks on it and I have manually try to change the icon, did system restore, scanned for virus/spywares, without any success.

I have contacted Dell Customer Service (Software Agent) twice, and they are unable to offer any solutions except advise me to reformat the harddisk.

As I have quite a number of softwares\programs on my laptop and reformatting my HD will be my last solution.  I believe there must be a way to overcome the problems.

Any tips on the solution will be most appreciated.

Can you still run " scf /scannow " in Vista ?   To find out, close all programs, get to the command prompt, and type

" sfc /scannow ".   It takes a while, but it replaces all windows system files to there original state. It does'nt always remove user installed apps, but it will put the files where they belong. You'll need your installation disk, or restore disk that cam w/ the computer.

 Ah, must have been something like a theme you had installed that goofed. Maybe ?