Windows Vista - Icons locked and overlapping vertically. Help!

[OCDP]

I couldn't figure out a good title.. I have encountered a very strange, annoying problem.

So I log onto my laptop, (i'll try to explain the best I can until the screen shot is up) and my desktop icons are all overlapping to the left vertically. So basically, instead of my usual 2 rows, with the icons spaced apart like normal, they are now all in one vertical line to the left and all overlap eachother (icon & text, not just text). I have never seen this before. I tried googling late last night but couldn't find much at all. It doesn't seem to be a common issue, I don't know, it was too late to investigate too too much.

How it got like this, I do not know. Someone must have been on there messing about with something. My only idea's are spyware or something buggy with vista. I have fiddled with all the desktop options, allign to grid, auto arrange, sort by, etc. I tried a number of different options... nothing worked.

What I can do is, move the icons apart, but it's all manual. They do not allign to any grid. As soon as I get them half assed back into two rows, and then click sort by type, they all go back to the left in one vertical row with icons all overlapping.

A screenshot will definitely help, and I'll have one in a couple hours. I just know Canreef has some very computer techy/savvy people on here, figure I would give it a go as google isn't providing much. So in a nutshell, all icons are in one row to the left, rather than the normal two rows I had, and all the icons are overlapping, icon , text and all. When I *manually* re-arrange to how they looked before, and sort by type, they all go back into one row with everything overlapping.

Kind of a stupid problem to have ..