i am having a very serious problem indeed, i am a novice so i can just describe my nightmare i installed a dbmanager software to view a mysql file, the next thing after installing and rebooting, was all file extensions in my taskbar and startmenu were replaced by .lnk of one program, each time i try to execute any program, it will open that particular program, then i uninstalled the program now tho i can open the correct program all icons of all programs in my start menu are now replaced with the same icon. i have tried unsuccessfully to resore to an earlier time, i get the message that my computer was not restored, this is a nightmare, PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!

Go In Control Panel/User Account and create a new user account in there. Login and see if in there you have more icons. You can also recreate each icon you are missing by going in c:\program files right clicking on the executable files and choosing Send to\Desktop(Create Shortcut)

thanks so much i am now re-creating shortcuts of the executable files from c:\program files. SO FAR SO GREAT
thanks
tounoni

I just built a program that goes through an entire hard-drive, and makes the Icon of the .lnk file the same as the program that it points to. You can feel free to download, install, and distribute it at will, so that this can be prevented in the future (if not prevented, easily fixed.). Be aware, that it doesn't fix where the shortcut points to (your post says that all the icons opened something else, it does not fix that) but after you uninstalled all the icons were messed up.... this program will fix the messed up icons. Anyway, here is the link:
http://www.aftermath.net/~coma/Tools/iconfix.zip