Make sure the Show Desktop icons feature is enabled Right-click on the empty area on your desktop. Choose View and you should see the Show Desktop icons option. Try checking and unchecking Show Desktop icons option a few times but remember to leave this option checked. To show or hide desktop icons Right-click or press and hold the desktop, point to View, and then select Show desktop icons to add or clear the check mark.
Skip to content Home » Useful tips » Why do my desktop icons keep disappearing in Windows 7? Useful tips. The permissions prohibit that the files are edited by the current user. Please note : This is a hack which may impact other parts of the operating system. Everything worked fine afterwards on a test system but make sure to backup the files properly before editing them. First we need to take control of the files so that we can edit them.
To do that you need to take ownership first, and then modify the access rights of the current user so that the files can be modified. The first part can be automated. Just download the script at this forum and execute it. This should add a Take Ownership entry to the right-click menu in Windows Explorer. Select the Take Ownership option which should transfer ownership to the logged in user. The user still does not have permissions to save the file which means that we have to complete the next step as well before we can edit the broken shortcuts Powerscript file so that it will not delete broken shortcuts automatically.
Open an elevated command line prompt. You do that by clicking on the Start orb, All Programs, then Accessories. Now issue the following command to grant the active user full rights of the file. Now you can edit the file normally in a text editor like Notepad. Open it and locate the line line This basically returns a blank list to the script so that no shortcuts get deleted. I have tested it with five broken shortcuts and they have not been deleted after running system maintenance.
That fixed the broken shortcuts but we still have the issue that shortcuts that have not been used for some time are deleted by Windows 7 as well. We have to almost perform the same operation here. Take ownership of it and grant the active user access rights. Make sure you backup the files properly before you edit them. Please let me know if this worked for you or if you have a better idea on how to fix the deleted shortcut problem in Windows 7.
Way to go. Thank you this was very helpful. If there are problems I can distinguish them from original comments by the extra. Ran maintenance manually without problems but will have to wait and see what happens when scheduled maintenance runs. Also, I use Fences and have taken a snapshot so should now be able to restore desktop if it is erased.
If only I had done that earlier! Just an update… what I tried did not work. Thankfully I now have up to date copy of my desktop using Fences. I created the following batch file to help based on the article and comments above. Save the following text with a. Just an FYI — Your write up helped me develop a script for automating the patching of the power shell scripts. Thanks soo much! I have the disppearing icons issue as well: 1. I backed up the user dir.
After rebuliding the workstation I restored the the user dir. Everything was perfect till the next morining, the icons where gone. Is this the same issue as above? Did anyone try just disabling desktop cleanup via GPO? I have not had this issue and have been using Windows 7 since it was released. One of the first things Idid was disable desktop cleanup because I feel it is useless.
I know there is a setting in GPO for this. Wondering if this is changed to force disable that function if it would resolve? From the looks of the solution proposed it should. Yeah, we disabled it via GPO because modifying the script may work for some time but revert back to its original state with windows update or other ways. I created a shortcut to a folder on a network drive, then put all my shortcuts in that. How about a fix that actually makes the broken-icon deletion function properly.
From there, you might be able to unhide apps. The options will vary depending on your device or launcher app. Simple Reasons for Icons Not Showing You can do so by right-clicking on the desktop, selecting View and verify Show desktop icons has a check beside it. Go into Themes and select Desktop icon settings. By Windows system icon, this means you can right-click on My Computer, My Documents, or the Recycle Bin to access the new menu options.
Once you have arranged the icons on your desktop in the desired way, go ahead and right-click on My Computer and left-click on Save Desktop Icon Layout.
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