Desktop icons not reacting to drag'n'drop

I have a very odd "phenomenon" or with one of my Windows 10 boxes:

All desktop icons (except Explorer-related icons, i.e. drives, folders, etc.) do *not* react onto objects that are being dragged onto them.

Normally, when I grab a file and drag'n'drop it, say, onto my editor's icon the editor opens that file. On this particular box, however, the file's icon is instead moved and then lies over the editor icon ||-(.

I.e. the drag'n'drop is obviously not interpreted as a command to the program onto which the object was drawn but as a command to Explorer to move the icon to that new position.
This holds for all desktop icons except for icons that are Explorer-related (like moving a file into a folder or to a drive or from one folder to another). Opening (i.e. double-clicking) applications, however, works.

Any idea what could cause this? It's super-annoying since I constantly involuntarily re-arrange my desktop icons on this machine and then have to move them back again. And I can only open files from within an application (typically using File -> Open) instead of conveniently dragging them over to the application. This is the first and (fortunately) only machine where I see this odd behavior! Is there some switch or registry entry that could trigger this?

This is on Windows 10 v1909 (Build: 18363.1679). Unfortunately it's a company managed device and so I can't simply upgrade to the latest and greatest.