Can't drag and drop desktop icons

For some reason I am having a lot of difficult moving icons on my desktop.

For example, if I wish to drag a shortcut into a folder on my desktop. I

drag and I get the right arrow but when I drop it on the folder either

nothing happens or I get an error message saying "The action can't be

completed because the file is open in another program. Close the file and try

again." Meanwhile the file is not open. I noticed that I already have an

identical shortcut in the folder but instead of just asking to overwrite the

existing nothing happens. Then if I try to delete the shortcut from my

desktop I also get a file in use error message. Anyone encounter this?