desktop icons

[Guest]

My desktop underwent a change today. I lost several icons, and the remaining
ones "doubled" (2 of everything) and they appear to be the icons that were
originally loaded (the computer is less that 2 weeks old). When I delete one
icon, its "twin" is still there, but inoperable. When I try to create a
shortcut on the desktop, I get the message: :"Windows could not place the
shortcut on the desktop. Check to see if the disc is full." What disc?
This is the second time this has happened. The first time (about 7 days ago)
I did a system restore.

 

[GTS]

I suggest you run chkdsk /r (which is quite time consuming). It sounds
like a possible hard drive problem.

 

[Keith Miller MVP]

Try opening a command prompt window, then pasting the following commands,
noting the results of each.

reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\User
Shell Folders" /v "Common Desktop"

reg query "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\User
Shell Folders" /v "Desktop"

Watch out for line wrap. The normal results for each should be:

Common Desktop REG_EXPAND_SZ %PUBLIC%\Desktop

Desktop REG_EXPAND_SZ %USERPROFILE%\Desktop

You can check the contents of each by pasting %public% in the Start Search
box, the clicking on 'Public Desktop' in the resulting Explorer window. Do
the same for %userprofile%, checking the 'Desktop' folder.