Alot of people are having alot of problems with IE7, some people arent having any problems at all. The recommended installation procedure is to download it from MS website, turn off your av and firewall, shut down all running programs, and have nothing running but windows, and then install. From what im reading, most of the problems are occuring because IE 7 is getting installed via automatic updates with everything running , people that install manually with the recommended procedure are having fewer problems, but IE7 still has alot of bugs. I would suggest uninstalling it for now and go back to IE6 until they work the bugs out or you can research the problems youre having, and collect all the fixes before you reinstall. Heres a guide for the uninstall which is supposed to be trouble free, if you choose to do that. MS website also has info on the problems/fixes, and uninstalling.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot the guide, here it is. LOL
Internet Explorer 7

Monkey - that's the hard way of changing filename association...

If you hold shift and right click on a file - select Open With...
Then select the program you want - and check "Always use this program"

Easy without restarting

Na, that was to change the icon not the file association. I think the file association is OK, it's just that he's getting confused because the icon's are not showing up as they should be. Didn't work via conventional methods. I'm sure I'm missing a peice to this puzzle. bdb, can you just make sure that your showing as a computer administrator on this PC and not Limited account. You can check this on Control Panel, User Accounts. Look undernearth your logon name. Also, could you change your icons after reverting back to ie6? And are you sure this is only happening to ie7 and WMP, and not others?

Aaahhh - my bad only did a skim read

I'm deffinately an administrator. I'm at school at the moment so when i get home i'll post a reply as to whether uninstalling IE works, and if that doesnt i'll uninstall the new version 11 of WMP as well, n see if that has anything to do with it.

As for installing both IE7 and WMP I did it manually via the microsoft website, i've heard alot about the bugs and had already been given the advice about disabling antivirus and closing programs etc, which is another reason as to why i'm confused at where this problem has arisen, the install of both went fine.

And yes lol, i am confused as to why they're not showing correctly, its not like its stopping the system from working, i just like to see my music files as music files.

The only files that have lost their icons are those relating to IE and WMP, so like, all webpages (html n so forth) that i've got saved and media (mp3 avi mpeg etc etc). Everything else is fine.

Woo! it worked, well, a combination of uninstalling both internet explorer, and windows media player, and winamp, and then getting them all installed again in the right order (except IE), now the icons are showing up just fine .

As for HTML files i'll just keep playing about until they reappear, going to uninstall firefox while IE is still uninstalled then reinstall IE and then firefox which should solve it. just another bug, still not entirely sure whether it was to do with media player or IE though.

Thanks alot to everyone who gave me help.

Ben