Hi!
> I am running XP Professional. I do not know how this happened
> but every single icon on my system changed to a shortcut icon.
> Does anyone know what happened and how I can fix it?
Your computer's icon cache file has become corrupt. One way of fixing
this involves using the Microsoft PowerToy known as TweakUI.
There exist two versions of TweakUI...one for Windows XP only and
another that is officially for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 but works fine
on XP as far as I can tell. It is the older version (1.33) that you
want, as it definitely contains the option to rebuild the icon cache.
You might also try going into your Windows directory (with the options
to view hidden and protected system files turned on) and deleting the
"ShellIconCache" file. Windows may not let you delete it, but it's
worth a shot anyway and could fix your problem without the use of
TweakUI.
William