Windows 7 - Desktop Icons Freeze but Start menu/Taskbar work normal

I`ve got a weird problem that keeps happening. Without any errors or warning,
all of my Desktop Icons become frozen. I cannot activate any of them. If I
have any windows open in the Taskbar or programmes running in the System tray
I can left/right click on any of them and they all work
fine(Programmes/Window Explorer/IE7 etc). I can access the Start menu and
activate whatever as usual.
I know that this (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=932406) is the solution if it happens in Windows Vista but this is Windows 7.

Can anyone help me?

Thank you very much

Hi - I have the exact same problem happening where I can't click on the desktop icons but can access through windows explorer no problem. Windows 7 (x64) on laptop. Did you figure this out?

even after reboot? and have u tried sytem repair

I have actually solved the issue from another forum but thanks for your response.

It occurs ONLY when Internet Explorer 32 bit (IE8 for me but possibly same issue with IE7) is run on my 64 bit machine. So when I use Firefox, IE8-64 etc the problem doesn't occur. Some things like flash (i.e. Youtube) do not work on IE8-64 which is the only reason I would want to use IE8-32.

I know this is an old thread however I wanted to thank Brad for posting the IE8 bug. Here at the office I had a Windows 7 32bit system running IE8 32bit. We where having the same issue with the icons freezing up and not working. After reading this I went to the PC tested the icons while IE was open and they worked fine. After closing IE8 they stopped working.

This helped point me in the right direction. I went through and reset all IE8 options in the advanced tab of the internet options. This disabled all tool bars. Restarted IE8 and everything worked fine including the icons. They did not freeze anymore when I closed and reopened IE8. So my next step was to turn back on all the IE8 tool bars that where disabled due to the reset.

I found the exact problem that was causing the issue. Recently the person at the PC installed the AVG Security Tool Bar for IE. This was the problem. When I enabled them, IE shut down however all desktop Icons froze and would not work. I then had to go into the task manager and manually shut off all iexplorer.exe instances that where left running. Apparently for some reason this caused some type of issue by not properly shutting down IE8 completely. Once I completely shut down all IE8 process's this allowed my desktop icons to unfreeze.

I am now working on uninstalling the tool bar from AVG. Sad because I happen to like AVG and the uninstall process is just long, stupid and not very user friendly. If I did not know how to find the information I would become very frustrated. According to AVG's website the only way to uninstall the tool bar is to download the latest installer which takes around 20-30 mins then use the repair option > and check the install toolbar option. This will uninstall the toolbar if its already installed. Talk about a long work around to remove their software. I will be emailing them shortly lol.

Anywho hopefully this may help someone else here on the forums who is having the same issue and is looking for what could be causing the desktop icons to freeze up. I would of never thought that IE8 and a simple tool bar would cause such a big problem. I am sure that as time moves forward other Windows 7 users with that toolbar installation will be facing the same issue.

By the way I love these forums. The best on the net in my OP. Thanks for all of the great information that is posted here. You all are a life saver :0).

I had the same problem.Suddenly my desktop icons would not open but icons on the taskbar would.
My solution.
Open control panel.Open "mouse"
Go to "Double click speed" Adjust arrow setting slow/fast until folder in window opens and closes with double click.Click on Apply.

Thanks to BradS for helping to solve the problem I was having. In addtion to the desktop icons freezing, a restart from "Start", "Shutdown" would shut the computer down completely and not reboot. (the reboot during software installation was still OK, and a "hard" reset on the computer also worked as expected).

IE 32 bit turned out the be the culprit. When closing IE. the desktop icons would "freeze". Going into taskmanager and deleting the iexplore.exe 32 processes would restore the icons to their former state. Somehow I had gotten IE 32 onto my taskbar. I fired up IE 64, put it on my taskbar and my problems are gone. The youtube/Adobe Flash problem mentioned in BradS note is also not a problem these days, since Adobe has a "new" flash module compatible with IE 64
.
Thanks again BradS. Without your note I don't know how long I would
have beat my head against this brick wall. As it turns out, it's almost taken me more time to register for this site and post this note than it did to solve the problem.

Thanks to BradS for helping to solve the problem I was having. In addtion to the desktop icons freezing, a restart from "Start", "Shutdown" would shut the computer completely down and not reboot. (the reboot during software installation was still OK, and a "hard" reset on the computer also worked as expected).

IE 32 bit turned out the be the culprit. When closing IE the icons would "freeze". Going into taskmanager and deleting the iexplore.exe 32 processes would restore the icons to their former state. Somehow I had gotten IE 32 onto my taskbar. I fired up IE 64, put it on my taskbar and my problems are gone. The youtube/Adobe Flash problem mentioned in BradS note is also not a problem, since Adobe has a "new" flash module compatible with IE 64.

Thanks again BradS. Without your note I don't know how long I would have beat my head against this brick wall. As it turns out, it's almost taken me more time to register for this site and post this note than it did to solve the problem.

IF the icons are froze, go to control alt delete and choose task manager then choose processes and then click on iexplorer.exe*32 and choose end task. Do this untill all lines iexplorer.exe*32 disappear. check that the desktop icons are not frozen. I use windows 7 pro 64 bit oem version. go to internet explorer 9 32 bit then went to tools, manage add-ons, and disabled skype browser helper and skype click to call. This made the icons work after using ie9 32 bit again.

Just want to say thanks to all who posted on this thread...this is the most useful guidance I can find on this problem.

I also want to add this one tip...if you launch IE from the Taskbar (in Win 7), unpin it and go to Start, look for IE 64bit and pin that.

I have a new Lenovo Thinkpad that I did a recovery from mfr's backup. So, it should be a factory "pristine" system right? Turns out that the default for the Taskbar is IE 32bit.

Indeed, when I was using IE 32bit, I would intermittently have the unclickable icon problem. I also noticed that the cache was retained from one session to the next (sites were not automatically logged off on exit). Seeing those processes running in Task Manager made it all click for me. No wonder I was getting strange results.

Now, if someone could tell me where to find a solution for the intermittent problem I am having with the system freezing (no mouse movement, ctrl-alt-delete, typing, etc). The laptop does not seem to be overheating, at least not to the touch...I've had that happen on others. Any ideas what else to consider?