desktop icons, have a littlebox w/arrow???

hello, on my main screen, i have about 15 or so,
icons for misc. short cuts for my computer. every now and
then, these icons have a little box ( lower left corner )
always there. but every now and then these boxes will
change color.....?????? whenever i use a program, Norton
System Works or SystemTweak, or any other program,
if i recall. why do they change and what can i do to fix????
what are these little boxes.

last nite it was a white box with a little arrow and now a white box with a little red, upside down check.......

thanks in advance. novatoasv

 

The norm. is for the little black arrow to appear in a white box, lower left of the icon. The arrow simply means that the icon represents a shortcut to whatever is named underneath, and you can right-click the icon and click Properties for more details.
Some people don't like the arrows and use a program to remove them. But I have never heard of them changing colour or appearance!
Probably not worth worrying about.

johnni

 

Something similar happens to my icons when I am running low on system resources.
I reboot and all is okay again.

I tried a couple of those trial resource-recovery applications from www.tucows.com and that is how I figured out it was my machine maxing out.
If I used their recovery tools, the icons would change back.

So now if my machine starts going bonkers, I just save anything and reboot.