Weird missing icons problem - XP

Just re-installed Windows XP and there's no end to the problems I'm encountering.

First of all, my control panel now looks like this

It looked normal right after the install, but somewhere between me installing all the XP security updates (all 90 of them!) and trying to get rid of an inactive network connection (it's not allowing me to disable it) my control panel suddenly looked like that.

Does anyone have any idea what is going here?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Btw, everything was mostly working fine before the reformat. I just had some networking problems, and I started having some problems with XP hanging at boot-up because of a corrupt system32\config\software file.

I was hoping a fresh install would be the end of all my problems, but apparently I just started a bunch of new ones...

 

Icon cache may be corrupted. Do a google on PowerToys (for XP) ... you want TweakUI. Install and run it. In the tree you'll see Repair. Click on it and you'll see Rebuild Now in a dropbox and the button Repair Now ... click on it. Should fix ya up.

... it will re-order your desktop icons though.

 

If you're having continued problems, even after formatting and reloading Windows, you may be looking at a hardware problem. Download and run a memory diagnostic (I like this one http://www.majorgeeks.com/Microsoft_Windows_Memory_Diagnostic_d3955.html) and visit your hard drive maker's web site to download and run their diagnostic to test the integrity and overall health of your hard drive...

 

Yeah, I've been suspecting a hardware problem, so I'll try to run those diagnostics you suggested. Computer is only a year and a half old, and hd (WD) is less than 6 months, but that doesn't really mean much these days.

I'll also try the PowerToys - thanks for the tip.

Looks like it will be another long computer day - ahhhh, modern technology rolleyes

 

OK, TweakUI took care of the Control Panel icons.

Now I have to figure out the networking icon I can't get rid of (even though I unchecked 'Display icon when limited/no connection').

And I have to figure out why my file and printer sharing doesn't work anymore...

Thanks guys!