Unwanted "Desktop.ini" icons appear on desktop. Windows 7 64bit

Anonymous
2009-12-13T07:16:51+00:00

These icons are not short cuts, but notepad files.  Why are they there?   How can they be eliminated?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Ramesh 181.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2009-12-13T09:17:29+00:00

Hi AntipodeamRJ,

Enabling the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) setting in Folder Options hides the two Desktop.ini files, as well. To access the Folder Options, open Windows Explorer, click Organize, click Folder and Search Options and select the View tab.


Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Desktop Experience]

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-30T23:58:07+00:00

    I agree with Janje and some others here. The solution is clearly stated a few times. Do not uncheck "Hide protect Operating System files (recommended)". There is no reason anyone needs to see them 24/7, even a developer. If you actually NEED to see system files, then by all means, go check it, do your bit of "under the hood" tinkering, then go back and RE-CHECK it! This is more about COSMETIC appeal than anything that people are complaining about. I am a heavy LINUX OS user, and this kind of thing doesn't happen in GNU/Linux. But I need Windows for certain things, as many programs do not run "pretty" on Linux. I have Win 7 on my main partition, Win XP on a second, and Lubuntu on a third. I certainly do not need to be viewing OS system files while browsing Windows Explorer.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-10T20:10:14+00:00

    hey i was faced with the same "problem" so i just put (they were two) them in the recycle bin, after i figured out they were important i went to restore them then got the message that i shouldn't move them as some application may not function properly if done. but i accepted and restored anyway, however after it restored it it started restoring other files and i thought the files were from the bin and stopped the restoration. but then when i restored the other one it did the same thing so i thought maybe its a part of and restored it whole. my question is, did i do something terribly wrong? one of them i didn't mess up but the other kind of got messed up? you said: These are not critical to the system and can easily be replaced. can you please explain a little more, like how "bad" my move was and what it's effects will be if any at all since you said they're not critical. and if they are you also said easily replaced, how is it done? 

    thanks in advance and please treat me as a person who is very unfamiliar with these kind of things

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-04-14T06:28:49+00:00

    Thank you for help

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-06-10T06:17:05+00:00

    hi 

      same problem to me can u tell for windows 8 how to hide this

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