Windows 7 desktop icons keep disappearing -- any ideas?

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Terencek

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After a Windows 7 reinstall I have the oddest problem: the icons I place on the desktop for Computer, Control Panel and my DVD drive keep disappearing! They're fine for a few days, then suddenly the desktop redraws and they're gone and have to be recreated. Any ideas?
 
Hey Terencek

I have encountered this with Windows 7 a few times... a couple of these times it was InfraRecorder burning software that kept hiding the icons, it is a bug with the software... or else it was Microsoft's System Maintenance troubleshooter deciding to clobber them all.

If you are not using InfraRecorder... then perhaps read this...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978980/en-us

That is all I can think of now... good luck,.
 
Drag them all onto the explorer icon in the taskbar and make them into a jumplist instead. Desktop icons are so windows '98...
 
Grouter said:
Drag them all onto the explorer icon in the taskbar and make them into a jumplist instead. Desktop icons are so windows '98...
Click to expand...

normal_desktop.jpg
:D

After doing a quick Google on the issue at hand I come to notice that it's pretty common, although I personally have never encountered such a problem. Good luck :)
 
Tks for the info. After reading the Microsoft support bulletin linked above, I then hunted high and low on my system to find the System Maintenance troubleshooter, to turn it off as described. Can't find the blerry thing anywhere -- it certainly ain't where Microsoft says it is in that bulletin, at least in my W7 Ultimate....! Running a Search doesn't track it down either.

But the symptoms described are spot on: my desktop icons do indeed disappear about once a week, so it's definitely Windows 7 trying to second-guess me and impose its will over my own desktop icon choices!

Anyone got a roadmap to turn off the System Maintenance troubleshooter?
 
LOL... It might be because you are not viewing the Control Panel in "Category" mode... Perhaps go to the control panel and change "View by" to "Category" from the drop down arrow.

You will now see the "System and Security" group... under this heading you will see "Find and fix problems"... click on this... next on the left hand side, you should now see "change settings", click on this and click on the "off" option under Computer Maintenance... click OK.

See if this helps///

EDIT: Here, a linky... http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/165701-system-maintenance-troubleshooter-turn-off.html
 
are you sure you are not logging into a temp profile?, most of the times win7 corrupts the profile and then when you log in all the icons are gone, have a look under "users", if there is a temp folder, then that answers your question
i have a fix for this, just let me know if this is indeed your problem
 
Tks again for the help. Definitely not a question of icon cache size, as I had already tried that. And I don't have a temp file under users. So I'm now trying actually turning off System Maintenance, which I was finally able to find thanks to kilobitsperyear's pointers. Anyone know if there are any potential downsides to turning off System Maintenance like this?
 
As far as I'm concerned there are only upsides: Having windows nagging me every 2 hours to do a backup is a PITA. It's the first thing I switch off when I install win 7. Use CCleaner instead.
 
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