When desktop icons have gone all screwy run this in regular cmd prompt
ie4uinit.exe -show taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" shutdown /r /f /t 00
Warning — that last line will immediately reboot the system. You have to use it though because you shut down explorer.ext