trouble with icons

I tried searching for help in google but I couldn't figure out how to describe it. All of a sudden all of my icons were blank. They didn't disappear, They just didn't have any picture. This is on my desktop, quick links and start menu. They all looked like files that weren't associated with anything. I manually fixed most the icons, properties, change icon, but I couldn't fix the desktop shortcut in the quick links. Any ideas of what happened or how to fix it?

This tweak should help I got one more I have to go through my books to find it

Windows forgets your Folder settings

if you like to customize your folders to look nice, changing the view mode, position or display options. After restarting, you realize that everything was in vane, you lost the settings. This is due to the fact that by default Windows XP remembers the settings for at most 400 folders. To solve this go to Registry Editor and look after these keys:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShell] and
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellNoRoam]. Set the BagMRU Size to 5 000 (or up to 8 000). Now it's solved remember you have to restart for changes to take place

Iconcache
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.

Change Iconcache size
Open your registry and find the key below
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]

Create a new string value, or modify the existing value, called "Max Cached Icons" and set it to "2000" dec. This will increase the maximum icon cache to 2MB.