Problem with icons and desktop color depth

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Hi, on my laptop (Windows XP Home) I am using a desktop color depth of 32
bit (16 million colors) at a resolution of 1024x768. When at home I connect
my laptop to an external 19" LCD monitor on which I use a resolution of
1280x1024 at a color depth of 16 bit (60000 something colors, the max
allowed by the 16 MB on my laptop's graphic card).
The problem is that from a couple of days whenever I set the desktop color
depth to 16 bit (both on the external 19" LCD monitor and the built in
laptop's monitor) the usual "ultracolored" Windows XP icons are replaced by
a set of icons (using probably not more than 256 colors) which I seem to
remember from previous Windows versions.
Everything is back to normal once the 32 bit desktop color depth is set BUT
I cannot of course use such color depth on the external LCD at 1280x1024 due
to my graphic card's memory limitation.
How to solve the problem?

Thanks.
FIGJAM