XP shortcut icons will not display in Windows 7 after migration

Hi i purchased a new computer and i migrated all my XP sp3 icons over to the new machine. This includes but not limited to favorites, desktop, as well as a third party email client that allows me to store favicons. In total there must be a few hundred shortcut icons.

Problem: The problem is the icons are not displaying, the only way i can get them to display is by revisiting each site and creating a new shortcut and deleting the old link and placing the new link it its place. This is happening both on desktop and in all files on the directory, no old shortcut icons are showing, they all just default to the standard ie icon.

I cant possibly do this with hundreds of icons, i would loose my mind lol.

First can you explain the issue and why this is happening, is there a difference between the two formats?

Second, is there a better and faster way to fix this without having to revisit each url and create a new shortcut. Thanks.

I'm not really sure why one would want to do this but have you tried to do this in XP mode of your Windows 7 Pro?

I do not have xp mode installed so have not run it in that mode.

Just thinking, I have never tried it.
Start and type in compatible, Run programs for previous operating systems.