Some desktop shortcuts disappeared!

This just happened to me as well. Windows Seven Dell laptop. 64 bit i think.

If we disable the "Windows Scheduled Maintenance Task" - what else are we disabling? Is that bad in other ways?

Someone else asked but I see no responses.

I've noticed funky things with the network connection. It doesn't always hook back up after logging on. I'll have to click on the NETWORK shortcut in win explorer and wait for it to populate. If the above-mentioned "management" programs run while the PC is asleep or otherwise disconnected from the network, is it possible that it doesn't find the targets for these shortcuts and "cleans" them up? Anyone chased that rabbit yet?

I have found a workaround that works quite well. It won't work for most of you because I have cygwin installed on my system, and use a script in there, but someone could program something with a windows batch file.

I have two commands, save and restore. Save deletes all my shortcut backups, and then copies all the desktop shortcuts to a backup folder. In cygwin, that is any file in the desktop folder with the extension .lnk. The restore command copies anything in the backup folder to the desktop.

What makes this really nice is the Desktop Restore software from Jamie O'Connell, found at midox.com - mid ox Resources and Information. for free. This software will allow you to save and restore the desktop location of all the icons. In the save command, I call his program to save the layout, and in the restore command, I call it to restore the layout. Works really nice. (Though, not as nice as if MS fixed this!!)

Perhaps someone who scripts in Windows can craft a similar solution. Jamies Desktop Restore code is lovely native windows stuff, but my "scripts" are just cygwin shell commands.

I hope this helps some of you!

I know that this is a pretty old thread, but I borrowed Gunthar's idea of disabling the Task Scheduler, and tweaked it instead of disabling it.

Here's a recap of the problem many of us have been having. We have desktop icons that are shortcuts to folders, files or programs on systems accross a network. Every so often, these icons turn up missing. For me, this happens (sometimes) when I bring my laptop home. When I do so, the links that were on my desktop are no longer valid because they refer to networked locations at my office.

Task scheduler was set to run every Sunday at 1:00AM. When this happens, Task Scheduler sees these disconected icons, and deletes them.

Solution: Configure Task Scheduler to run only when I know my laptop is at work AND connected to the LAN. This applies to my WIN7. Other OS's may be similar.

1) Click Start icon. Enter "Task Scheduler" into search window.
2) Click on Task Scheduler link at top of window.
3) Expand the tree in the left pane to: Task Scheduler Library | Microsoft | Windows | Diagnosis.
4) In the right pane, double click "Scheduled."
5) Under Triggers tab, edit the trigger to a time when your computer will be at work or set the trigger to run On Idle.
6) Under the Conditions tab, customize for your tastes, but also do the following. Under the Network heading (near the bottom of the dialogue window), check the "Start only if the following network connection is available." Select your workplace network.

The problem with this "solution" is that it doesn't protect desktop icons that point to networked locations at home from being deleted. The ideal solution would be to allow the diagnosis to run whenever, but disable it from checking broken desktop links. I don't know how to do this, or if it can be done.

Hey, I don't know what it was exactly, but MS seems to have finally fixed this problem. I haven't had my icons disappear in several weeks now! Yay!

On the other hand, about the same time, my computer has quit activating the screensaver or using the power settings to shut off my monitors. I wish I knew what that change was and how to fix it. Any ideas?

From what I have read about this posting, shortcuts are disappearing from the desktop I hope this is correct. I found this KB article from Microsoft. Hope this helps.
Desktop shortcuts disappear in Windows 7
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