Vista - Doube Dipped

I just booted for the first time this evening and it's the same as before. I moved one or two of the icons by dragging/dropping and something odd occurred. When I did that, I'd suddenly have not one but two icons of the same thing...one that worked and one that didn't???!!! I could click on the somewhat larger of the two and it acted as a shortcut should. The smaller one was dead as you can't do anything with it-including deleting it. Right click on it and it brings up the Catalyst Control Center of all things. While I had it opened I switched from Classic to Medium icons and that royally screwed things up.(see attached) You can see two images of Diskeeper and a couple more. The small one does nothing and right clicking it doesn't bring up a way to delete it. You can also see there's one program right on top of another Like IrfanView and SanDisk Transfer Mate.

As to your question-no I didn't set the background as my desktop image as some of the icons and text under it are ok whiloe most are not however. I wojuldn'thave gotten that had I placed one on top the other. Something tells me there's a possibility this Catalyst Control Center may have something to do with this mayhem of staggered icons and texts. I thought I was having a stroke the first time I saw it.

What happens if you hide the desktop icons?

Right-click on the desktop and select View. Click to remove the tick next to Show Desktop Icons (highlighted). True icons will disappear - any that don't will not be icons as such, but will, as suggested in my previous post, be part of the desktop wallpaper.

I couldn't get that far, Dwarf, because before I saw your post, I decided to see if changing the background photo would help in some way and it did. All icons looked normal again although they appeared in different places than before, which I found quite odd. I can't help but wonder if something went amuck during the updating that caused an overlapping of the icons and text in that the same photo background I had before the updates was the same one I had copied and sent to someone to show my background and icons to and had used the program "Screen Hunter" where you can copy a small segment of anything or copy your entire desktop and it places that shot in your pictures folder.

Could it have been that during the uploaded of the MS updates somehow that photo of the desktop I had in my pictures folder got superimposed over the original desktop? It seems that's what happened somehow although all this wasn't the case prior to the updates since all icons looked normal and no overlapping of icons or text. As I booted up this morning I waited anxiously to see what would happen after I changed the photo last night and it looks as it should now. Does all this sound feasible?

I think you must have hit the nail on the head in your #10 post although I didn't do it-must have been the updating process somehow.