Blank white desktop icons on new Windows 7 install

"From Fix Blank or White Shortcut Icons on Desktop.

To refresh and reset the icons cache,
go to the following folder:

C:\Users\AppData\Local\

To see the hidden AppData folder, go
to Organize -> Folder and Search
Options -> View tab, and select ""Show hidden files, folders and drives"", and
uncheck ""Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"".

Once inside the folder, delete
IconCache.db. Create a new file named
IconCache.db, and set it to Read Only
attribute in Properties (if the file
is not read only, the cache won’t be
reset). Then restart the computer.
Remove the Read Only attribute of
IconCache.db file, and the icons cache
will be refreshed.
This step will
restore the desktop shortcut icons to
their lawfully icons.

EDIT

I tried it, and the same behavior is on Vista. Properties of such an icon has the same tabs as the command prompt (cmd), so I think the white page icon is a generic cmd prompt, and Windows treats these as shortcuts to cmd rather than themselves. That's why it's impossible to set their icon.

As another experiment, I created a shortcut to cmd.exe, then modified it to add the parameters of ""-k old-prog.com"". This time the icon-change worked, but the program didn't ! My conclusion is that the 32-bits cmd.exe cannot run these programs.

I think this is some weird effect of 16-bits emulation on Windows. Apparently the 16-bits cmd.exe doesn't accept icon changes. As 16-bits is now totally abandoned in Windows 64-bits, I don't think there is much point in reporting it to Microsoft."

"Using IconPackager fixed my problmes! Great suggestion. Turns out it was also the cause of my problems too. Long time ago I tried it for the 30days. Then after that not only did my icons screw up my computer wouldn't boot anymore. IconPackager somehow screwed up my system from reading my bootcat.cache file and my system would bluescreen on reboot. Only way to fix this was to boot to recovery mode, delete bootcache.cache, replace it with a bootcache.cache file from another machine running Windows7. Then once booted I deleted iconpackager. I'd have to do this all the time. The only way aronund this problem was to upgrade to Windows7 Ultimate. Then I could reboot. But my icons were always white squares. So after months of being annoyed I found this page. I reinstalled iconpackager and on first run it said my trial period expired and would I like to restore the windows icons. Said yes and now they are working.

So iconpackager is the cause and solution to life's problems much like alcohol. But stay away from Iconpackager unless you need to fix this problem."