hi everyone, i got this strange problem whith wy desktop icons. They all changed to real player icons and have .lnk extensions. i replaced the extensions with the right ones but to no avail(eg. adobe acrobat from .lnk to .pdf). whenever i try to open the file after renaming it to the right extension, it says the the file does not exists or it is damaged. I also removed real player completely from my system, no result. I guess it has something to do with the registry. can some plaese help. Thanks

You had better change the shortcuts back to your .lnk extensions first. There is a hidden icon cache file in your windows directory, ShellIconCache, which contains a copy of all the default desktop icons. It sometimes gets corrupted. If it does, your icons will go all black or they may display the wrong icons. If this happens, delete it and reboot. NT (& Win9x) will repopulate the cache with the default icons. To delete the ShellIconCache: at a command prompt, change to the %SystemRoot% folder remove the hidden attribute from the file: type attrib -h shelliconcache and press ENTER. delete the file: type del shelliconcache and press ENTER. logoff and backon and the default icons should be restored. hth, Ropey

Hello, Sounds like avirus, or spyware to me.....you have spybot, or adware?..if so update em, an run em....an run a virus check...and use an oniline one as well, like panda...:-)