Windows XP Icon Problem

[X-ray]

Guys and Gals

I have tried to fix this myself but I seem to be missing a vital clue here. It's like this: I have several items on my desktop, let's say 4 mp3 files, 2 jpegs and a ZIP archive. I've noticed that the icons are playing musical chairs here (or playing funny buggers, or some other game I don't know the rules of).
The mp3s sometimes have the jpeg icon, the jpegs sometimes have the ZIP archive icon: it's all messed up.

My sound files are set to open with Winamp, and it restores its associations automatically on load. Same story with the pictures: they are automatically opened by ACDSee. This is a new problem, I didn't have it a few weeks back, and I use the same programs to open the same type of file.

Any advice on what can make icons change?

[Darklight]

Hey X-ray, sometimes the icon 'registry' or cache gets corrupted.  I've had this happen - sometimes icons get stuffed, sometimes they don't appear at all, etc.  Try this:

Just refresh the icon cache by deleting the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually /Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data). It will be automatically recreated.

That should fix it.  Got that from here
Try giving it a reboot after doing that and see what happens.  Good luck  :-)

[X-ray]

Thanks Darklight, I will do that.

[X-ray]

@ Darklight

Thanks a lot, buddy: it has been 5 days and my icons have behaved themselves nicely. Problem solved.    :-)