Icons Disappearing

I have a slightly odd setup in tha I have an internal SSD for Windows 7 64bit and nothing else. All other programs and storage are on an external drive.

I am not sure if this is what is causing this problem, but often in the task bar or start menu or even on the desktop, the graphics from icons are missing; there is just a blank placeholder.

Can anyone tell me how to rectify this?

The funny thing is that say I have Firefox open, the icon in the task bar will often be blank, but when I click on the icon to see what pages are open, the icon is shown in the popup. Is there a workaround to fix this issue?

regards

Thanks for your reply Walker.

I'm not sure if this is the same issue as my icons are there, but just blank. They never actually disappear, they are just placeholders.

I have the latest drivers for my Radeon HD5770 card.

The strange thing is that I booted to safe mode and the icons were still missing. If I right click and select properties and select change icon, once I OK out of the dialogue boxes, the icons are there. The same thing when I boot normally. If I again right click and repeat that procedure, the icons appear.

When I do boot up, the desktop appears with all icons in tact, then a few seconds later, most of them disappear. Not all icons are missing. Adobe Acrobat is always there, as are a number of other programs, but many are just blank placeholders. This is the same on the desktop, taskbar and start menu.

I figure if it is still happening in safe mode that the issue is more with windows than my graphics driver.

Any help gladly accepted.

Shane