Final update to close this out.
We pulled the trigger on two more machines and there wasn't any problems with the install or the icons.
I did, however, talk to the right dev that remembered having this issue when installing other applications on his system... AND he documented it.
We ran it on the troubled computer and it worked. Icons were back and working. As for the errors the original dev got during the install I'm not sure on that one, but no one else had it and we're going install on another tomorrow. Fingers crossed it's a one-off.
Any rate here's the code to run from a command prompt. It clears the icon cache and reboots.
Text
ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCachetaskkill /IM explorer.exe /FDEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /Ashutdown /r /f /t 00