help, my icons are disappearing!

Im running Windows 7 on my Dell Studio 1737.

Recently iv started to loose my icons, instead of the icon appearing with its neat little picture it is being replaced with the .dat (data, as in something no program can open...i think).

First started with the magnifier on my desktop, instead of the entire icon the .dat icon appeared in front of it, with the default magnifier behind it, but now the folders icon has gone the same way. Instead of the yellow open folder it is just the data icon altogether. This is on the toolbar, file explorer & desktop wheres its happening.


Any ideas what could be causing this & how i can revert it?

thanks guys

edit; As you can see, the HDD icons are missing, as is the magnifier icon (bottom left of desktop) and various icons in the file explorer.

 

Have you messed with "Add/remove Windows features"? It has never hapenned to me...

If you can't solve the problem you can always use System Restore and selecting a Restore Point made when you already had the icons.

 

try going to task manager.
under procsses tab find explorer.exe and end process.

then go to the application tab and click new task.
type in explorer.exe and hit ok

then is should go back to normal.
i had that happen to my recycle bin.