Why has ".url" suddenly appeared in my Links Toolbar links, and how can this be remedied?

About a month ago, when I cranked up my computer (Power Spec from Micro Center, XP Pro, SP2, working well, maintained well for a couple of years with no crashes), some of my favorites on the links toobar had changed, and not to my liking.

I am using IE6 and do not wish to upgrade to IE7. I've installed IE7 on another computer and don't like the re-arrangement of the toolbars and controls at the top that won't let me put them where I want them.

The links affected were/are the ones that link to pages on the Internet.

Two changes have been made: the icons which were links to web pages had all changed to the blue Internet Explorer logo on a little white-page-with-a-folded-corner background, AND ".url" had been added. The addition of the ".url" to my designated link name of course eats up a lot of space and prevents all the links I had there from being displayed.

Each change has produced a specific problem:

(1) I right-clicked one of the changed links and there's NO OPTION available to change the icon. One tab named "General" opens, and following the "Advanced" option leads only to the choices of archive and index attributes or compress and encrypt attributes.

(2) If I right-click and choose the Rename option, I'm warned that changing it could make the file unstable. If I continue, and get rid of the ".url" then try to click on the link, the "Open with" option pops up. I selected Internet Explorer for a link I made to Google, and a window popped up showing this:

[DEFAULT]
BASEURL=http://www.google.com/
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.google.com/
Modified=30C91ACB6D89C8019D
IconFile=http://www.google.com/favicon.ico
IconIndex=1
IDList=
[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop3=19,2

I've been looking for weeks now for a tweak or fix or way to get back to the way it was, and can't find one, so if anyone on Experts Exchange can help, I'd really appreciate it.

Possible monkeywrench factor: just today, my wife reminded me that I did a manual backup of files a couple of weeks ago which involved mostly copying to a hard drive and some deleting of files. I was pretty careful about this, opting to leave anything alone if I wasn't 100% sure I should delete it. But maybe SOMETHING I did during the backup comes into play here as well.

Please note: The suggestion to "switch to Firefox" or Opera, or another browser, is NOT a solution. I have both of these and use them for specific functions. I still encounter enough instances of sites that will display properly in IE that will not display properly in Firefox or Opera--including, surpringly, recent ones that are from larger business websites--that I want to use IE as my first choice of browser unless I absolutely can't overcome this unwelcome change. (For that matter, anyone know how it seemed to just suddenly appear overnight?)

To everyone who's read this far: Thanks for your time and attention. I'd really appreciate any help you can provide.
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