If the icon cache in Windows 7 becomes corrupted, you may see the generic balnk icon in certain places on your desktop instead of the usual icons. If this happens, you can try to repair the icon cache by opening a command prompt and typing the following commands (close all applications first and save your data):
kill explorer
attrib -h -i %userprofile%\ appdata\local\iconcache.db
ren %userprofile%\ appdata\local\iconcache.db icon.db
explorer
Reboot your computer to finish the process.
Mitch Tulloch is a seven-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.