. . but once the problem was correctly identified the fix is easy to do by hand if you're willing to hand edit the registry - which I'm accustomed to 'cause I do it every week to fix somebody's worms or parasites.

This machine is coming back with the same problem in the morning. Turns out it was caused by trying to uninstall Napster (the new paid for version) or another program he'll give me the name of. I'll probably have to get those out of the registry by hand too.

Now that I've got it pegged, the icon thing is a 5 minute fix.