Bizarre Icons... Spyware?

Hoping someone can help me out as I'm having quite a scare with regard to my new computer (~3 weeks old; runs Windows 7).

Was working in Photoshop and toggled over to my desktop to find that all of the file (not application) icons on the desktop were featuring an odd little icon that looks like a little spider. I took a screen capture and I'm attaching it to this post.

I opened Firefox and started to do a search for phrases like "spider icon" and then toggled back to the desktop to find that the spider icon had been replaced by another icon... a little arrow.

I did a reboot and things are back to normal (see attached file featuring the icons as they look normally --- that green dot is placed there by Carbonite to show that that particular file has been backed up online).

I'm really concerned that this is either a system issue (in which case its probably just the tip of the iceberg) or a virus/spyware. I ran a Quick Scan using Malware Bytes and it didn't come up with anything.

Does anyone recognize the scenario I've described or the icons themselves?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

It's not a Spyware, I can tell you that much, since spywares are meant to stay inconspicuous. They can't monitor your computer unbothered if they do flashy things like this and alert the user.
Did it happen again? My bet is either some minor virus used to scare people, or a one time graphic error. If the problem persists, you could try using system restore. If you have it that is.

 

Hello,

It sounds like the shortcut icon overlay has become corrupt on your system. Not a malware issue that I'm aware of, but possibly due to an invalid registry entry or, more likely, a corrupt icon cache file.

Try removing the hidden %localappdata%\IconCache.db file from your computer and then restarting to allow Microsoft Windows 7 to generate a new one and see if that solves the problem.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky