disappearing mapped drive shortcuts on desktop

[opty]

i am having the exact same problem on two different machine one 7 pro and the other is a ultimate
it's the weirdest thing only shortcuts to the map drives and folders are affected, all the other ones are OK

oh one more twist to this odd ball problem, i have a second profile on each machine with pretty much the same shortcuts and on the second profile the shortcuts are still there on both machines

 

[Scott T]

I gave up trying to figure it out and just use the network name for the folder instead of the mapped drive. I still occasionally reboot and find my desktop icons turned off for some reason also. I hear SP1 is coming real soon!

 

[PatrickGSR94]

My boss is having the same issue with shortcuts to mapped drives and folders on mapped drives, on Windows 7 x64 Professional retail version. I'm thinking it has something to do with Control Panel > Troubleshooting > System & Security > Run Maintenance Tasks.

If I create several shortcuts to mapped drives on my desktop, click the Run Maintenance Tasks, uncheck the box to automatically apply fixes, then check the detail, I see that it says those shortcuts have a target executable that no longer exists, despite the shortcuts working perfectly when I click on them.

Perhaps this is the reason the shortcuts are disappearing, because of this "system maintenance" that runs automatically? I'm guessing this is something similar to the "unused desktop icons" in XP?

If I click on Change Settings while in the Troubleshooting window, I can turn off routine computer maintenance. Could this help keep those desktop shortcuts from disappearing? Why does it say the "target executable no longer exists" for those shortcuts when they work perfectly anyway?

 

[Scott T]

Hopefully it'll be fixed in sp1

 

[PatrickGSR94]

Well, the network drive shortcuts on my boss's desktop have disappeared again, despite the changes I made, which I listed above. The shortcuts on my desktop have not disappeared, even though I made the same changes to my system.

If this doesn't get fixed I'll never hear the end of it.

 

[Multibox]

The removal of shortcuts is caused by a cleanup task in Windows XP that is planned to run on sunday at 1 o'clock AM. This cleanup task scans the shortcuts on the desktop and removes any shortcuts for which it cannot find the destination file.
Because the cleanup task is started using the administrator or the system account, the task does not know the mapped drives, so it cannot find the shortcuts destination and thus flags it for removal.

This task is called "Diagnosis". To disable it:

Open the Start Menu.
Go to Control Panel , System and Security , Administrative Tools (near the bottom) , Task Scheduler , Task Scheduler (Local) (near the upper left) , Task Scheduler Library , Microsoft , Windows , Diagnosis .

In the right pane , Right click on Scheduled , choose 'Disabled'.

I had to figure this out because my boss had the same problem on his Windows 7 desktop and found the answer on the Microsoft Technet groups.
If you use google to search for "Windows 7 deletes links from desktop" you should find that post.

Note that desktop shortcuts that point to the UNC-path location of the file should not have this problem, so you could also change the shortcuts to point to the UNC-path location.