Windows 7: Every once in a while a desktop icon vanishes ?????

Every once in a while, one of the 50 or so icons on my win 7 desktop just seems to "vanish" for no reason - this usually happens on a fresh boot. The icons that vanish are just shortcuts so it's easy for me to restore any of them.

Whenever this happens, the "icon arrangement" on the desktop is NOT affected or changed (except for the missing icon of course)

Yes, I have had times when ALL the icons on the desktop get jumbled - but that is quite rare - happens maybe twice a year after I have some kind of program malfunction.

Anybody have any ideas what might be causing this ????
And it's not the same icons that vanish. Today my Photoshop CS5 icon vanished - so I just restored it.......

So wierd - but I KNOW THERE IS A REASON why this is happening - just cant fathom what it is.

System Maintenance Troubleshooter - Turn On or Off

Seems to be a common occurrence. Hopefully this will fix ya' up.

As far as your icons automatically rearranging themselves for some reason, you might consider un-checking the "auto-arrange" option on your desktop "View" properties... if you currently have it checked. Also the "align to grid" should be unchecked, if you want to be able to place your desktop icons wherever you want to and never be bothered by Windows' interfering.



That way you are in complete control. You should never again see the mysterious symptom you describe... whatever the actual cause might be.

I hope the auto maintenance tip work for you. What I do, instead of having a cluttered desktop, is to make a folder and I put all shortcuts in it. I also keep some docs there I need often.

I used to keep tons of icons on my Desktop and I had a similar problem occasionally, with icons vanishing --- or sometimes when I saved additional shortcuts to the Desktop their icons just would never show up. I finally figured out that I must've had too many icons on my Desktop because when I deleted some, others mysteriously reappeared. Why don't you try deleting a few and see if that makes a difference.

Also, another possibility is that sometimes the ones near the edges of the screen somehow slip 'off the screen' into. . . I don't know where --- cyberspace???? I've had that happen too, and occasionally if I put my cursor at the very edge of the screen I can manage to drag one or two back on the screen. Crazy, huh?

That sounds like a resolution problem. Kinda like your resolution is set higher than your screen will let you display.

Yes, my resolution is set at a high level and my DPI is also set to the higher scale choice (120) -- both needed to give me larger, more readable fonts. There's always a trade off --- in my case (and perhaps the OP's as well) I had to set my resolution and DPI higher to get the readability that I need.