Direct links to files suddenly appear in taskbar.

windos7user · 29 Jul 2014

This computer has several accounts. One account was left logged in when user left. Now at the end of the day the taskbar for that account has icons to all desktop icons and other programs the user does not use. I had no idea how they got there. I can't unpin them. There is no menu option to unpin them. In fact if I right click the icon I get a menu item to pin it. If I try to delete the icons I get a message about system privileges needed to delete the file. If I right click the icon it has a properties menu selection and that lists the actual file as a direct target. I am afraid to delete the icons because it seems that if I do so I will be actually deleting the file.

Does anyone know how this could have happened and how I can get the icons off the taskbar?

Thanks in advance.

Ranger4 · 29 Jul 2014

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

Can you log on to this users account. In other words do you have their password & user name, if so you could log on in that name & see if you can delete the offending icons on the task bar.

windos7user · 30 Jul 2014

I can log into the account. It seems as if all the items on the desktop and the start menu are now part of the task bar. There was an icon with the file name on the task bar for a file that is on the desktop. When I deleted the icon from the task bar it deleted the file from the desktop. This shows that if I delete an icon, the file that the icon goes to gets deleted.

Ranger4 · 30 Jul 2014

Did this person leave on amiable terms or were they fired. It's possible that this person may have left a script somewhere that is causing files to be deleted if you try to make changes to his files. Hopefully this has not happened.
If you need the files in question, you could copy them to another drive or a USB stick & then delete the ones on the computer.