Half of desktop icons mysteriously disappeared

Hi guys,
I searched long and hard on Google for a solution to this and while there are several instances of this happening I am not sure if any of the solutions pertain to my situation.

I purchased a new computer recently and the other day decided to migrate some of my old data to the new system via a USB enclosure housing my old hard drive. I was moving files all over the place and when I was finally finished copying the files over I went back to my desktop to be greeted with about half of the icons I had from two hours earlier. I am pretty tech savvy so I don't think I did this by accident.

Now it's worth mentioning that the missing desktop files are still present in the Desktop folder in Windows Explorer, but have somehow become absent on the desktop itself. Another factor to consider is that I was doing these file migrations late Sunday night. I have read that Windows 7 has some sort of option enabled by default that purges "unused" icons every Monday at 1AM. Could this have been what happened? It's a brand new PC! How does Windows know I wasn't going to use those shortcuts?!

Anyway, please see the following screenshots of the Desktop folders. The first one shows the icons that were on my Desktop before the half disappeared. And the second screenshot corresponds with how the Desktop looks now. And I am actually not sure why there are two Desktop folder instances.. pretty sure I only created the one user that it forced me to during setup. Anyway, sorry for this being long but I'd really appreciate some insight on how to remedy this and how to prevent it from happening again!

Hi Shawn,

Yes, the missing icons all appear to be Windows icons such as the ones you highlighted. Any idea how these could have disappeared? They must have been turned on at some point as they were showing on the desktop for about a week before disappearing. Can't imagine how I might have inadvertently turned them off?

Also, please tell me what is the difference between the Common desktop folder and the User desktop folder? It's almost as if I started out with the Common desktop, did my file migrations, and afterward ended up with the 'User' desktop! And like I said as far as I know the only User is myself (Windows forced me to create this User during Setup).

Hi Shawn, I am a bit confused on the solution for restoring these icons. I read and re-read your message but I am not sure what action to take? These icons were turned on when I originally booted up the system but somehow got turned off. If the solution is simply to re-enable them, do you know how they could have just magically turned off? Just want to make sure this won't be a continuous problem. I made a few registry tweaks during initial Win 7 setup but none that I imagine would affect the desktop. Perhaps I was wrong though!

Thanks, Brink. I got them back with that tweak. For some reason the Recycle Bin never got removed but all the others did.

Just out of curiosity.. any idea how these icons might've vanished? Especially since they were all there originally?

Haha nah, the tweaking was all me

Don't mean to veer off track or change the subject of this thread here but any idea why when I drag something down to the taskbar it wants to 'Pin to Windows Explorer'? How about if i want to pin to taskbar and not Windows Explorer? It has somehow decided to monopolize my taskbar. As you can see, several items have become pinned to it in my attempts to pin these items as seperate.




(the modified Windows Explorer icon was one of my tweaks, for the record)