Windows 7 - Desktop Trouble - No Icons, No Drag, but Working Menu

Hello, ever'body. I've been a fan of Sevenforums for a while now, and always come here first when I come across a problem with my beloved PC. I'm running a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) and can access the rest of my specs if you need 'em. My problem is fairly simple but very strange:

Yesterday I opened my laptop lid to find my desktop was completely free of icons. No "no icon" glitches, no error messages. My Desktop folder appears completely fine, with all my files intact. Better still, my "drag highlighter" for the desktop appears to be disabled, but not my right-click menu-- I can't drag that transparent rectangle into existence on-screen, but I can right-click and get the usual menu. See attached screenshot.

I've restarted my explorer.exe process, rebooted my computer, rebooted from various System Restore points and then finally done a complete system restore from a two-week-old backup. The problem smugly persists. I haven't yet tried booting into Safe Mode or seeing if a different user account shares the issue, but that's next.

If anybody's ever heard of anything like this, please let me know. Thanks very much.

Right-click on the desktop, move the mouse over View on the popup menu, and then check the "show desktop icons" item which apparently must have somehow gotten UN-CHECKED on your system.

If that doesn't fix things try rebuilding the icon cache.

Icon Cache - Rebuild

You are both beautiful people. I actually did a little renaming-rebooting dance with my icon cache a moment ago, but that right-click Show Desktop Icons fix actually did the trick. Can't believe it was something that simple, and I have no idea how it managed to get unchecked in the first place. Thanks so much for your help! Five stars.

Glad to hear it's fixed.

And thanks for posting back so others can benefit from your experiences.