Error: All programs and taskbar icons turned white, don't work.

OS windows 7 home premium sp1 64bit.


Solving piece of advice will be highly appreciated.


Error: All task bar icons (not them to the right) and all icons in the program list
have turned white, and pressing them leads to nowhere, instead a window asks what program
I want to open.


This makes navigation quite difficult, because I have to open each program in the
program file folders.


Error occurred this way:
Media player vlc ran flawlessly for quite a while, I think it was v.1.11.11.
Then suddenly vlc captured all icons that is all icons became vlc icons, and all
icons being pressed would open vlc.
At that time I was able to uninstall vlc, and all icons were back to normal.
Then I used vlc portable for some time, and icons were OK.
For some reason I tried to install a vlc nightly build, and again all icons became vlc icons.
And this time I couldn't find a way to uninstall the vlc properly. So I found vlc
program folders here and there and deleted them. That removed vlc, but all icons
now turned white, and didn't work.
I found a program and ran it, that should restore icons, but didn't work.


Solution to get my icons back and running?
Thanks.

Thank you for answering.
I tried the pieces of advice. But none of them worked.
I also tried to restore the system to an earlier point, that didn't work either.