Some desktop shortcuts disappeared!

[jjensson]

Ok, that's not funny...

I played some UT3, made some screenshots w/ Fraps to the desktop, downloaded a vid to the desktop, and when i was finished, there where some empty spots in my icon rows on the desktop. I thought that something shuffled the icons around, but then discovered that about 4-6 shortcuts where missing. There where simply gone, i did a search for them.

After some investigation (including examining my desktop backup) i found that all the missing shortcuts have a broken link (the destination doesn't exist at the moment).

So, what is this strange behavior? Shortcuts that no longer work are deleted automatically without warning the user??? Anyone had this problem too?

I'm a little worried...
jj

PS: The shortcuts where created in WinXP prior installing Win7. Could this be the problem and why?

 

[scottmcgee]

I too have this problem. For instance, I have a phone with an SD card. Link is not good when I don't have the phone docked. Similar with my thumb drive. I really hate that it keeps deleting icons.

One that really bothers me is that I have a set of icons to connect to other computers on my local network. It includes one to "this" computer. That one went away overnight last night. Strange!

Does anyone know of a fix for this?

 

[greenlink23]

im suffering from this as well. although it doesn't happen all the time, it's still annoying. i have shortcuts to both my external hard drives and a flash drive that aren't always connected. they dissapear sometimes.

but i have two more shortcuts that disapear along with the others ones. i can't explain/know why, they are shortcuts to 'Bluetooth Devices' and 'Desktop Gadgets' both which are in the control panel.

 

[Knocks]

This is an extremely annoying problem. I had shortcuts to several files and folders on my external hard drive which are all gone now.

The purpose of the icons was to remind me of the stuff I needed to come back to later. Now I have to do the opposite--remember the things that I needed to do in order to re-create the shortcuts to them. A little backwards, eh? Thanks Microsoft.

 

[Greg]

I had all my desktop icons disappear after a reboot. I couldnt recover them. Luckly I had another Admin account so I just deleted that profile and made a new one...very aggravating. Hope this gets sorted out soon.

 

[zigzag3143]

I had all my desktop icons disappear after a reboot. I couldnt recover them. Luckly I had another Admin account so I just deleted that profile and made a new one...very aggravating. Hope this gets sorted out soon.

You know it would be easier for us to help you if you had bothered to put your system specs in. I would be able to compare your spec, OS, etc with knocks, and the previous OP.

This is an extremely annoying problem. I had shortcuts to several files and folders on my external hard drive which are all gone now.

The purpose of the icons was to remind me of the stuff I needed to come back to later. Now I have to do the opposite--remember the things that I needed to do in order to re-create the shortcuts to them. A little backwards, eh? Thanks Microsoft.

Knocks I understand how frustrating this could be but we really are here to help. the more info we have the better

Waiting for Info

Ken

 

[Greg]

You know it would be easier for us to help you if you had bothered to put your system specs in. I would be able to compare your spec, OS, etc with knocks, and the previous OP.



Knocks I understand how frustrating this could be but we really are here to help. the more info we have the better

Waiting for Info

Ken

Doh....sorry about that

Laptop
Celeron R [email protected] GHz
2.5 gb ram
32 bit OS Win 7 RC build 7100

available disk space 39gb

Thanks, Greg

 

[Knocks]

Not sure how hardware specs would help troubleshoot a problem with shortcuts, but here you go.

Dell Inspiron 1520
Core 2 Duo T7300 2Ghz
2GB RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate RTM x86

Seagate 700GB USB 2.0 hdd

 

[fseal]

Oy, I hope they didn't automate the "You have unused desktop icons" nag from XP

As annoying as that was (especially since it ususaly poped up twice in a row) at least you could say no!

Not at home right now but maybe a search of the registry for keys related to automatic desktop cleanup might work... (or desktop options)

 

[zigzag3143]

Not sure how hardware specs would help troubleshoot a problem with shortcuts, but here you go.

Dell Inspiron 1520
Core 2 Duo T7300 2Ghz
2GB RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate RTM x86

Seagate 700GB USB 2.0 hdd

Actually you both are 32 bit, have abt 2 gigs of ram on similar cpu's, etc.

Doh....sorry about that

Laptop
Celeron R [email protected] GHz
2.5 gb ram
32 bit OS Win 7 RC build 7100

available disk space 39gb

Thanks, Greg

No problem it was just my 15th post in a row for sys specs.

Did you guys install any 3rd party apps? were you both clean installs or upgrades?

Ken

 

[Greg]

Actually you both are 32 bit, have abt 2 gigs of ram on similar cpu's, etc.



No problem it was just my 15th post in a row for sys specs.

Did you guys install any 3rd party apps? were you both clean installs or upgrades?

Ken

Upgrade straight from MS sight .

More info on mine....lost my network connection and could not reconnect so I desided to reboot. I got the black screen with the message some apps havent shut down yet you may lose data if you continue (not sure if that was the exact statment but it was simialar...I know I should have wrote it down since this is an RC) I chose shut down anyway. After the reboot the icons were gone and still no net connection. Turned out a reboot of the router fixed the network issue though.

Kinda wish I hadnt killed that profile now because its going to be hard to trouble shot the problem.

Think Ill add my specs to a sig

 

[Knocks]

I did install 2 registry hacks that were shortcut-related. One was to remove the words "Shortcut to..." from new shortcuts. The second one was to change the overlay arrow icon to make it less noticeable.

 

[ammoun]

Missing Shortcuts from Win 7 desktop

So did anyone find out what was going on and why these shortcuts were deleted (and by whom)?

 

[perkinw]

So did anyone find out what was going on and why these shortcuts were deleted (and by whom)?

I have the same question. I have a brand new Dell PC running Windows 7 Home edition. Yesterday more than half of my shortcuts disappeared. All were shortcuts to executables on the C drive. I had to recreate them.

I wasn't doing anything special at the time. I had created a new user account and had logged into the new account, then back into my own account. I didn't notice the missing shortcuts until later when I closed some windows.

I'm not aware of any pattern in the shortcuts themselves. For example, one user in this thread suggested that the missing shortcuts were ones that had been renamed (e.g., rename firefox.exe as firefox), but I rename all of my shortcuts.

It is hard to believe that Microsoft hasn't fixed this problem by now.

 

[smlmark]

I'm having the same thing happenning. Icons (mapped drives and directory shortcuts) disappearing for no apparent reason.

Dell Optiplex 755
32-bit
Intel duo core 3GHz
4GB

 

[ammoun]

I read somewhere that these shortcuts could be deleted by Win 7 as it performs some "cleaning" process without us knowing or approving such cleaning and that the deleted shortcuts are broken shortcuts and those created in earlier versions of windows (XP)! Fair enough, I tried and made sure all are not broken and I recreated the shortcuts in Win 7. A week goes by and all was well until three hours ago! After leaving my Win 7 idle for a few hours I came back to find the exact same shortcuts were missing again and are not in the trash!
What s going on?? Anyone figured it out please help us out.
Thank u all.

 

[Gunthar Rowe]

I have the same kind of issue, two days ago I renamed a folder to speedup a game load time that I'm doing dev work on, but I have about 15 shortcuts to subfolders that where in this, now renamed folder. Today, while out on a job, windows though it a good idea to delete all the "broken" shortcuts. I'm quite pissed to say the least... As, when I got back just now, I was about to rename said folder back to it's original name again.... Is there no way to disable the desktop cleanup "wizard" that no longer "exists" but now has free range over my desktop!!

 

[J.R.]

I had a problem with some shortcuts recently. I set Distributed Link Tracking Client to manual and stopped it. It solved my problem. It's one of the services found in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Or access it directly by going to services.msc in the Search Panel. I also had a problem with renaming files which turned out to be a Distributed Link Tracking Client problem too.

Edit: Forgot to add that sometimes you can do a Refresh and it brings back the shortcut.

 

[Gunthar Rowe]

ok, of course, after much searching and then finally posting here.... I found the "magic" words to strike a hit in google

If you create desktop shortcuts to removable storage places such as NAS the icons will disappear from time to time because Windows 7 has a built in task schedule to clean up broken and unused links.

To prevent the task from running you need to disable the task in the task schedular: start-programs-accessories-system tools-task scheduler
Expand the tree in the left hand pane until you get to Task Scheduler Library-Microsoft-Windows-Diagnosis.
In the right hand pane, right click the task named Scheduled and click Disable.

 

[Gunthar Rowe]

@ R A,

I'll do this also! Thx mate!

I don't want to have this issue again