Diappearing Icons

[Maurice]

I generally leave my PC running all the time and at night simply turn off
the monitor. Once in a while when I restart the monitor all the desktop
Icons have disappeared as well as all the icons at the bottom of the screen.
I have found no key or combination of keys that bring them back so I am
forced to pull the plug on the PC and restart. I run XP Media Center
Edition service Pack 3. Any ideas?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I generally leave my PC running all the time and at night simply turn off
the monitor. Once in a while when I restart the monitor all the desktop
Icons have disappeared as well as all the icons at the bottom of the screen.
I have found no key or combination of keys that bring them back so I am
forced to pull the plug on the PC and restart. I run XP Media Center
Edition service Pack 3. Any ideas?

I can't tell you why you are losing your icons, but I can tell you
that pulling the plug is a very poor (dangerous) thing to do. You
should always shut down in an orderly manner.

Press the Windows key and you should get the Start menu, and you can
shut down from there.

 

[Don Phillipson]

I generally leave my PC running all the time and at night simply turn off
the monitor. Once in a while when I restart the monitor all the desktop
Icons have disappeared as well as all the icons at the bottom of the screen.
I have found no key or combination of keys that bring them back so I am
forced to pull the plug on the PC and restart. I run XP Media Center
Edition service Pack 3. Any ideas?

F5 is default for REWRITE SCREEN. Have you tried F5?
If it fails, you may wish to try another keyboard.

 

[Rick Merrill]

You could run the "rebuild icons" process.

I can't tell you why you are losing your icons, but I can tell you
that pulling the plug is a very poor (dangerous) thing to do. You
should always shut down in an orderly manner.

It certainly used to be true, but if nothing is running it is not
as dangerous with win xp sp3...

Press the Windows key and you should get the Start menu, and you can
shut down from there.

Good idea.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

You could run the "rebuild icons" process.


It certainly used to be true, but if nothing is running it is not
as dangerous with win xp sp3...

Yes, newer versions of Windows reduce the risk. But that doesn't mean
the risk is gone. In my view, what I said above stands: "pulling the
plug is a very poor (dangerous) thing to do. You should always shut
down in an orderly manner.

 

[Jose]

I generally leave my PC running all the time and at night simply turn off
the monitor. Once in a while when I restart the monitor all the desktop
Icons have disappeared as well as all the icons at the bottom of the screen.
I have found no key or combination of keys that bring them back so I am
forced to pull the plug on the PC and restart.  I run XP Media Center
Edition service Pack 3. Any ideas?

Yes - run that rebuild icons process and see how that goes.

Unless you have a bootable XP installation CD or an XP Recovery
Console CD you should really stop the plug pulling.

If your system seems unresponsive, there are ways to make it talk.