What's up with my desktop icons?

[Chris Bell <clbell compasonline net>]

Ever since I reinstalled Mandrake 7.1 for probably the 4th time (this
time I wanted reiserfs support) my desktop icons aren't correct and
can't be changed to anything else.  Also, a link to a url on the desktop
will not work and it's icon is a blank piece of paper and it's type is
text/plain...this is after dragging the url from Netscape to the
desktop.  Any ideas from Gnome experts?