How frustrating. I'd take off any extra toolbars I had, delete them completely and turn off all protection and anything at all that could stop them one-by-one (and come straight/only to PC inbetween each one as I know that's safe; create a post here with all the supposed-to-be-moving icons) and see if it was one of them.

And/or, I'd download each of the moving smilies and see if they move down on my machine? Did you look at your registry at all, see if there's something in your caw there :-)

How about skins? Did you change skins at all? Might be some animated gifs that don't work equally with all skins?