Changing Icons in Vista

Hello all,

I have a particular problem, and nothing I can find in Google addresses it.

I have a lot of file folders in Windows where I have tried to change the image displayed on the folder... for example, in an art folder, I changed it so that the folder displays a sample picture inside of the folder. I do this by the simple right-click, change folder picture option in Explorer.

Sometimes it works. Some folder, I can change. Others, will not change.

Now, the weirder thing is that they seem to be constantly changing by themselves. Pictures from completely different folders appear within other folders, as the folder icon picture, at random. This is problematic because random, unrelated pictures on my harddrive are popping up all the time, in random folder icon locations. Some of these pictures I would prefer people not to see.

Does this make sense to anyone?

Welcome to our Forum
One good thing about computers, they cannot do things by themselves. There is always a cause, the problem is isolating and removing it.
Lets take a few steps to see if we can attain this goal.
Make a full anti virus scan and download and make a full scan with malwarebytes.
Try a clean boot and see if the problem continues. If it does not follow the clean boot procedure to isolate the cause.
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7
You may want to read this tutorial about the icon cache
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117229-icon-cache-rebuild.html