Windows doesn't resize icons correctly

Hello, my problem is some of the icons everywhere in windows (desktop, explorer ...) aren't being resized properly. For example, on the desktop, I have icon that has various scales like 48x48 and 64x64 (the default steps, and several other), but windows just refuses to acknowledge their existence and in stead downscales or upscales icons on it's own, resulting in uglyness. It has poor quality and doesn't choose correct image from the icon file no matter what size i set my desktop icons at.
It's like that in explorer too, for example in list view where they should be 16x16, it downscales from an other size, instead of choosing the existing 16x16 icon.

I have windows 7 ultimate x64.
Here is visual example.

Is there any way to force it to use the size that I have? Because not all icons have 256x256.

Also I have fuzzy memories that on an other win 7 machine it displayed them properly, even if the icon only had 32x32 max.

I have installed Win 7 on another machine and I have to say - you are wrong, I don't need 256 icons at all. It resizes properly from other formats as well.

It only doesn't work on my laptop in question. Please see if there are any solutions again. I don't want to reinstall win. Thank you.

Ok, so last night I did a bunch of things that I don't even remember and somehow it got fixed. I think the problem might have been cause the thumbnail cache file was missing, and windows didn't recreate it on it's own.

Also I noticed that the icon size steps in several places were not the standard 32 and then 48, for example in the superbar it was something in between. Maybe it's the resolution, I don't know. Windows is so automatic...