It sounds like what you are describing is not that icons are highlighted but that the desktop icons lost transparency. Meaning that background behind the text of the icon is different colour than the desktop background (it could be white or blue in colour). Depending on your desktop background colour, it could make it appear that all your desktop icons are highlighted.

Was the icons on your pc working correctly before and have just started looking funny. If so I suspect this is the case. Also did you recently remove the Spy Sherriff virus from your pc?

I had a variant of the Spy Sherriff virus. One of the symptoms was my desktop background changed to an all white background and I was not able to change it. The other symptom was my desktop icons lost transparency (as described above). I found the following link was very helpful in resolving the first symptom.

http://www.delphifaq.com/faq/windows_user/f850.shtml

If the second symptom I described sounds like the problem you are experiencing, I
resolved the second sympton as follows:
1. Go into the registry by starting RegEdit.exe from the start button.
2. Look for this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and delete this branch.
3. Restart your system and this should resolve your problem.

can you help me in finding a solution to my problem with the icons being highlighted, thanks redletters.

do what i said

I had the same problem few days ago and found the solution. Here's what you should do:
Right click desktop and click properties> click desktop>customize desktop>then web, there was a webpage selected that was apparently added by adware and when you delete it the icons should revert back to normal. Hope this helps.

This is how I fixed mine: right-click on the desktop, go to Arrange Icons By and make sure Lock Web Items on Desktop is not checked.

My 1 year old had pushed some buttons on my keyboard and made the icons highlight in blue. It took me three days to figure out how to fix it.

I was just going to say that. Completely works.

Thank you jamdorj! That fixed it.

this highlight problem happened to me too. I was trying to copy and paste an image from MSWord to my desktop.

It's fixed now thanks to your advice.
I don't really think it was adware..here's what I did:
properties> click desktop>customize desktop> then pick another image, and then go back to the image I was using.

thanks again!

Wow! That got it done. I had the same problem with my computer. I got that shadows thing checked and it got rid of the blue highlight.

thank you jamdorj that helped me thanks man