Renaming desktop icon makes it disappear

Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere. My searching turned up nothing.

I have a few icons on my desktop that are there for installed programs. Some of them have longish names, so I've tried to shorten a couple of them. When I do, the icon disappears, and I can't figure out why. It doesn't happen with all program icons, just certain ones.

Am I messing up the linking somehow? Or is this a bug?

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

I've had that happen a couple of times also, so I think that it must be a bug, but I'm not certain that it is a W7 bug or a program bug. I just went to the program's directory and used the context menu to send a copy of the .exe to the desktop and renamed it without a problem.

Ah, excellent! Thanks for the tip. I'll try that.

seekermeister said:

I've had that happen a couple of times also, so I think that it must be a bug, but I'm not certain that it is a W7 bug or a program bug. I just went to the program's directory and used the context menu to send a copy of the .exe to the desktop and renamed it without a problem.

It's not a Windows 7 bug renamed my Icons without losing any of them. Must be the programs!!!!

This is an MS bug. It happens if you have set UAC to Never Notify. The solution is

Set the UAC to the Default setting of "Default - Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer".
- or -
If changes are made to the default UAC setting, you can do one of the following:
1. Keep C:\Users\Public\Desktop folder window opened on the user's desktop while doing rename operation
2. Press F5 on user's desktop when this problem happens

This is the MS support page Desktop items disappear after renaming them on Windows 7

Bill2 said:

This is an MS bug. It happens if you have set UAC to Never Notify. The solution is

Set the UAC to the Default setting of "Default - Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer".
- or -
If changes are made to the default UAC setting, you can do one of the following:
1. Keep C:\Users\Public\Desktop folder window opened on the user's desktop while doing rename operation
2. Press F5 on user's desktop when this problem happens

This is the MS support page Desktop items disappear after renaming them on Windows 7

Well I can rename Icons alright without UAC on. So a programs is conflicting with something.

Bill2 said:

This is an MS bug. It happens if you have set UAC to Never Notify. The solution is

Set the UAC to the Default setting of "Default - Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer".
- or -
If changes are made to the default UAC setting, you can do one of the following:
1. Keep C:\Users\Public\Desktop folder window opened on the user's desktop while doing rename operation
2. Press F5 on user's desktop when this problem happens

This is the MS support page Desktop items disappear after renaming them on Windows 7

That worked great Bill2. Thanks for the link.