Blank Desktop Icons in Windows 8

I posted this in the Microsoft Windows 8 forum and was directed to post here instead.
We did look for answers before posting, but our specific issue is different than what others have had regarding "blank icons."
After updating our workstations to Windows 8, icons located on a network drive (e.g., in the "W:\ICONS" folder, where drive W is mapped to a shared folder on a server) are displayed as a blank document-- a solid white rectangle with the upper right corner
folded down.
However, icons located on the workstations' local C drives are displayed correctly-- and if we copy the icons from the server to the workstation they display correctly.
If we go to the shortcut properties and click "change icon," the correct location on the mapped network drive is already listed and the desired icon is already displayed and selected in the window, but re-selecting the icon and applying the
change does nothing-- the desktop shortcut still displays with a "blank document" icon.
We've tried the suggested solution of turning off Windows Explorer, deleting the local icon cache, and rebooting to force Windows to rebuild the icon cache, but it doesn't help either.
The desktop shortcuts work just fine, they are just not displayed with the desired icons.
By the way, the servers are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (if that matters).

Let me ask this a different way. Can someone try the following and tell me what result you get for Step 5?
Given: A workstation running Windows 8, joined to a domain on a network.
Given: A server (Active Directory Domain Controller) running Windows Server 2008 R2. (Not sure the server's OS matters; it's Windows 8 that matters.)
Step 1: Create a dummy text file (or other dummy file) on the Windows 8 workstation.
Step 2: Create a shortcut to the dummy text file on the Windows 8 desktop.
Step 3: Edit the shortcut's properties and change the icon, selecting some icon file (e.g., WHATEVER.ICO) located on the Windows 8 workstation.
My Result: The icon displays correctly on the desktop shortcut.
Step 4: Now copy the icon file and paste it somewhere on the server.
Step 5: Change the shortcut's properties to look for the icon on the server where you copied it to.
My Result: The icon displays correctly in the shortcut properties window, but once I apply the change the desktop shortcut displays a "blank document" icon.
Note: The type of file the shortcut points to is unimportant-- you can try it with a TXT, DAT, EXE, COM, or any other type of file. The issue is with the shortcut's icon, not the shortcut's target.
Interesting Aside: If you change the shortcut so the target is the ICO file itself, the icon is displayed correctly.

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