I have not come across this problem before. The only thing that I can think of is that either the file is corrupt or that Adobe Reader itself has become corrupted. Another possibility is lack of memory on your laptop, but this is unlikely to cause this problem. Try installing the latest version of Adobe Reader to see if that solves your problem.
Dwarf
4 x 4GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B (16GB)
Graphics card(s)
MSI GeForce GTX770 Gaming OC 2GB
Sound Card
Realtek High Definition on board solution (ALC 898)
Monitor(s) Displays
ViewSonic VA1912w Widescreen
Screen Resolution
1440x900
Hard Drives
OCZ Agility 3 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0)
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2
Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II
Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0
WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0
This would appear to be perfectly normal. I have copied some PDF files to the desktop, both the full files and shortcuts to the files, and this is the result. It looks as though the icon changes to show the first page in the document. Quite why yours don't show the red Acrobat symbol I'm not sure.
Dwarf
4 x 4GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B (16GB)
Graphics card(s)
MSI GeForce GTX770 Gaming OC 2GB
Sound Card
Realtek High Definition on board solution (ALC 898)
Monitor(s) Displays
ViewSonic VA1912w Widescreen
Screen Resolution
1440x900
Hard Drives
OCZ Agility 3 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0)
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2
Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II
Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0
WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0
4 x 4GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B (16GB)
Graphics card(s)
MSI GeForce GTX770 Gaming OC 2GB
Sound Card
Realtek High Definition on board solution (ALC 898)
Monitor(s) Displays
ViewSonic VA1912w Widescreen
Screen Resolution
1440x900
Hard Drives
OCZ Agility 3 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0)
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2
Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II
Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0
WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0