I think I fixed it PERMANENTLY now, what I did was: made a copy of 'blank.ico' and pasted it into my System32 folder, and rebooted and it seems to work with the appropriate REGEDIT command...

I have found the VISTA SHORTCUT MANAGER works as well, even though in using windows 10 pro 64.just putting my 2 cents in.

spyder

YAY!!! you're the man/woman whatever the case may be. This worked for me. thank you!!!!