Right-click desktop, click View, and uncheck Auto arrange icons.
Ramesh Srinivasan | The Winhelponline Blog
Microsoft MVP, Windows Desktop Experience
Can't move shortcut icons on my desktop to different locations on the desktop
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Anonymous
I cannot move my desktop shortcut icons around on my desktop. Think it has something to do with the auto-allign feature - how do I fix this ?
Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility
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Anonymous
2017-10-01T13:44:00+00:00 I was having exactly the same problem; on the desktop I ended up hitting escape a few times and I was able to move my icons again.
As a note this was occurring everywhere in Explorer as I couldn't move icons from one folder to another either.
Was going crazy as I'd never experienced this before. Checked all over the place. Read your
post and thought "This can't work!"
Tried it and it worked great! Unbelieveable! Happy New Year...
didnt believe this could work but it did lol. thank you.
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Anonymous
2017-07-03T17:02:45+00:00 Indeed this worked for me. Auto-arrange was already unchecked leading me to search for a solution. Thanks for posting this! Pressing ESC multiple times worked. Sounds like some sort of "mode" is active that needs to be "exited".
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Anonymous
2017-05-06T08:51:08+00:00 I play a game that requires me to push the ESC key a lot and it sometimes screws up the desktop icons. I just tap ESC til it works...there is no certain amount of times, I just do it til it works.
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Anonymous
2017-05-05T21:42:26+00:00 Pressing the escape button 3 times originally solved my problem, but, when I logged back on today, it defaulted back and they can no longer go off the screen even if I hit escape 3 times again.