Windows 7 - Shortcut arrows missing; strange picture instead

This isn't really a major issue but a minor annoyance.

Last night my boyfriend popped his removable USB storage drive in. I noticed that documents made in Notepad were opening in Visual Basic, which is not where I want them to open. So I went to properties and told it to open these types of docs in Notepad. Fine, it didn't work, but that's not the weirdest or most annoying part.
All of my desktop icons, the little arrow that shows it's a short-cut, they're all gone. In their place are those little icons for a file (particularly an image file) that windows doesn't know which program to use to open it. This happened right after I changed the properties of the one file that was not even on my computer.
I checked for viruses, checked the shortcut properties, even tried deleting the original shortcut and creating a new one; to no avail.
Does anyone know how to fix this or had this happen to them and know what caused it? Please help. Any help would be great. Thank you.

First, try this : Default File Type Associations - Restore

If not worked, this : System Restore to a previous day .

Third option : SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

And if everything failed, the last way is Repair Install ; but it needs the Windows 7 installation DVD. Do you have it ? If no, Do you have the recovery partition at least ?

Check these tutorials:

Default File Type Associations - Restore

Default Programs - Associate a File Type or Protocol

Default Programs - Set a Program's Default Associations

If you have a Restore Point, you can also try restoring your computer to an earlier time.

Edited to add: Arc beat me to it.

Hello DorkPixie,

In addition, it sounds like you will need to use the txt and lnk (LNK) downloads in the tutorial below to restore their default associations.

Default File Type Associations - Restore

Hope this helps,
Shawn

shortcut arrow may be brought back using tuneup utilities


Or using Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore

Thank you everyone so very much!!!! This one is the one that brought back my little short cut arrows: Shortcut Arrow - Change, Remove, or Restore
I am also going to try the restore default file types for the notebook files opening in Visual Studio. Again thanks you guys!!!

You are most welcome, dorkpixie

You are very welcome. I am glad you have half of the battle won.

I had a similar issue happen to me today. When I turned on my computer this afternoon the transparent shortcut overlay was replaced with the image of "unknown". Like when windows does not know what program to use to open something. I followed the instructions above which did restore my shortcut arrow. However when I attempt to remove the shortcut arrow again using the Remove_Restore_Shortcut_Arrow I get the same unknown overlay image. Can someone help me. Thanks so much

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit