Desktop Icons not working

Hi,
I installed windows 9 beta then its workiing fine.try

I started having the same problem this evening --- first time ever --- my Desktop icons in the Taskbar were unresponsive, in fact I couldn't even right-click on the Desktop. (My System Tray icons were working though.) Thanks to this thread, I went into Task Manager, Processes, and sure enough, there were 3 instances of iexplore *32 running. I ended the process of two of them and suddenly a whole bunch of IE windows appeared and started rapidly closing. There must have been about 25 of them --- and I wasn't aware that there were any IE windows open!!! But the good news was, that as soon as all those windows closed, my Desktop and icons were instantly restored. So all I can surmise is that even though I had thought that I had always closed all open IE windows, apparently there were either ghosts or duplicates of them running, that I wasn't aware of.

Thanks guys!!!

PS Just for your general knowledge and to compare to the problem of some of the other posters, I don't have any IE Add Ons running.

Saw this very old thread and found that even though we're now up to IE9, the same exact problem persists today. Seems amazing MS has yet to solve something thats been happening for so long..

Desktop totally freezes, go into apps, find 3-4-5 remnant copies of IE, close and the desktop wakes up, and all the clicks I'd done in vain start loading.

It's a fairly simple fix, but one that is still annoying and certainly something MS should be able to solve.

RocD

This has been happening to me for the past couple of days, the only update that has happened is an update for Microsoft Security Essentials, I have been getting quite annoyed with this so I've created a shortcut on my start menu (which still works) to a little known/used tool called taskkill, this removes all traces of IE from my task manager, the command is written below for anyone wanting to use this method, I do hope that MS release a fix for this soon.

C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /f /im iexplore.exe /t

The extra switches ensure that any process called iexplore.exe are stopped.

This problem occurs every time IE9 is or has been active.

My laptop is used by several members of my family, who all are able to find the <enter> button, but that's about it. So killing an IE9 process is not an option (for them). I could make a shortcut on the desktop for the taskkill command that was proposed in one of the earlier messages, but since these icons won't work ... So Every time this problem happens, my support is required. This is very awkward, especially because I made a shortcut on the desktop to create and login into a VPN connection for my partner to connect to her server at work. When I’m not present, she can’t work.

Does anyone know if there is any chance Microsoft will solve this problem on short notice?

Found the cause for unresponsive desktop icons on my Win7 Pro 64bit machine.
Had same problem with IE8 and IE9.

IE addon from Skype was not letting IE shut down completely. Disabled addon and
everything back to normal.

From what I have read on the web, many addons are causing this problem.
Go thru your list and disable one at a time to see if any are causing the problem.

You will need to run Task manager and stop the extra versions of IE left running each time you run the test on a new addon.

It is Skype not Microsoft. THANKS

Hi there. I have been having the same problem for months! I have had a few issues with Skype and was intrigued by the comment posted in May, so I did the following: Open Internet Explorer, click Tools, click Manage Add-ons. From the left-hand pane, click "Toolbars & Extensions", look for "Skype Browser Helper", click once to select this, then click "Disable" and then close. Desktop icons work perfectly again, ALL THE TIME! And Internet Explorer is not left hanging when I close the window. And Skype still works fine. I'm very happy I found this thread. Thank you!