Sounds to me like your icon associations are hosed. If you have a poke in the registry, for example at:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg

...you'll see that the "(Default)" value is (or should be) "jpegfile". Go and look this up:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jpegfile

Under this, there's another key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jpegfile\DefaultIcon

The "(Default)" value for this is the location of the icon to be used for .jpg files. It probably points to the package that you just removed.

Note that (sometimes), the "DefaultIcon" key is under the extension key (.jpg), rather than the name key (jpegfile).

I don't know what the correct values should be -- it varies among versions of Windows (and I'm running XP on this box), but if this is the case, then we're a step closer to figuring it out.