Taskbar Icons Renamed

The screen on my laptop fluttered a little bit while I was in Internet Explorer. It was only a second, and it seemed to affect nothing - all the tabs I had open were still working. But then I noticed that Internet Explorer was no longer pinned to my taskbar. The three tabs I'd been using were still viewable, but the taskbar icon was gone.

Then I hovered the mouse over what was now the first icon on the taskbar - Google Chrome. It now showed me the 3 tabs I had open in IE11. The second icon had the appearance of Windows Explorer, but hovering the mouse showed Chrome. Icon 3 appears to be Word, but the text shows Windows Explorer. And it continues down the line. Icon 4 shows utorrent, but reads Word. Icon 5 shows taskmgr but reads utorrent.

I rebooted the laptop. Nothing changed. I unpinned everything from the taskbar and tried repining. When I re-pinned Chrome, the icon showed as Windows Explorer, etc, etc.

I then successfully restored the laptop to earlier today, well before this occurred. No change. The desktop icons for Chrome and IE and Word are all visually correct, and are functional.

Maybe these to reset procedures will help:

Taskbar Pinned Items - Reset and Clear in Windows 7

Jump Lists - Reset and Clear All Items

UsernameIssues said:

Maybe these to reset procedures will help:

Taskbar Pinned Items - Reset and Clear in Windows 7

Jump Lists - Reset and Clear All Items

Thanks, but even though Malwarebytes found nothing, I downloaded and ran the latest version of AdwCleaner. I don't recognize what it found but removing it took care of the problem.