peppermint 4 white icons soultions?

I am running peppermint 4 on an older computer, the hardware wasn't the best for it's time (2004). It only has 1gb of ram and the graphics are obviously not up to par. It's a fresh install and my folders and icons are whited out or non existant. So my question is: Is there a way to dumb the graphical requirements for this OS down and if not is there a lighter version of it. I'd love to stick with peppermint I'd prefer to stay away for full blown ubuntu because 12.04 feels weird and I just like having a variety of OS to learn with. Tried manjaro wouldn't let me install (kept asking for log in info even though it hadn't been installed, Kubuntu look cooly but the aspect ratio wouldn't match my monitor for some reason. already have xubuntu installed on another computer. I am up for anything with a gui (not puppy), but would like to stick peppermint or fedora (which new release only supports 64bit ](*,))

Peppermint4 is a 'very light' OS to start with............the icon set is a pale grey colour and presents a cool attractive image. I don't really understand the problem but suggest you refer your question to the Peppermint forum.

Simply going with another icon set might be the answer. I put Peppermint on an older HP computer that only had 512 MB of RAM and it runs great! The guy I installed Peppermint for has been really happy with it, he said that he has not had a single problem since he made the switch from XP. Kendall Weaver and his team do excellent work and I highly recommend Peppermint for low spec machines.