Desktop shortcuts to items on network drives sometimes disappear from desktop

Anonymous

I have a number of shortcut icons on my Windows 7 (RC1) desktop to networked items - some are folders on a NAS, some are mapped as drives, etc. However, sometimes Windows 7 seems to simply remove all of them without notice and I have to recreate all the shortcuts to my NAS items again.

I wondered at first if this may have been because Windows would sometimes boot before all of my network devices became available, but when that happens it just correctly marks the icons with a red cross to indicate that it couldn't find them at boot time, and as soon as the NAS is available then the shortcuts work fine.

However at random intervals, all seven of these shortcuts simply disappear from the desktop. All other shortcuts and icons are fine, and the mapped drives are still present in my 'Computer' display - it's just the NAS-related shortcuts on the desktop which vanish.

Any idea why this might be happening?

Andre

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

This feature is extremely annoying. Whenever I take my work laptop on the road, this has happens and I never knew why until now. In my case, when the shortcuts to my network folders and applications disappeared, there was no trace left, not in my computer or anywhere. And trying to figure out how to remap them all was a nightmare!!! Productivity lost, headaches, etc... thanks MS!

Fortunately, I found a way to get them back! Check this out:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_7-desktop/how-to-restore-desktop-shortcuts/0cfe39d3-16c7-49c3-b538-6d5a3f5b6abe/

After doing the copy from previous versions, I was able to find the missing shortcuts and drag them from the 'Desktop Temp' folder to my desktop. Thank God.

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91 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-06-13T19:38:02+00:00

Well.. I already suggest users to put shortcuts into a folder on a desktop when someone complains about missing shortcuts. I don't want to do anything with shortcuts automatically (some of them are not even network shortcuts) as most users are always on the network and only some of them suffer from this "feature". It was one of the silly feautures of XP (unused icons wizard) and they "improved" this in Win7 .. :/ Funny, that i don't see such ps1 on the Win 8.1. As always, improvements only goes to the next release. So you have to pay again for fixing stupid ideas..
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Anonymous

2014-06-13T13:53:31+00:00

I didn't see there were more replies. The problem is i have to find a way to do this automatically for 200+ machines. Copying customized ps1 file on top isn't working with admin rights and via GPO startup script. Maybe i should repeat all the commands in that post (taking the ownership, etc.), though i'm in doubt this will work.

How about setting up a preemptive GPO that will find shortcuts on the desktop and drop them in a new folder (on the desktop) called "Network Shortcuts". It is not a particularly elegant solution, but your people will get used to it quickly. If you wanted to get fancy you could make the "Network Shortcuts"

folder a toolbar item that they can go to.

New folder: "%userprofile%\desktop\Network Shortcuts"

copy policy: "%userprofile%\desktop\*.lnk" - "%userprofile%\desktop\Network Shortcuts"

Since Policy doesn't "move" files for you, you may need to follow with deleting the .lnk files from the desktop.... or maybe just set them to hidden. I haven't done this myself, it's just an idea. Test the **** out of it before deploying to 200+ (of course!) good luck!

(Thank you MS for censoring my testing vernacular)
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Anonymous

2014-06-13T12:49:15+00:00

I didn't see there were more replies. The problem is i have to find a way to do this automatically for 200+ machines. Copying customized ps1 file on top isn't working with admin rights and via GPO startup script. Maybe i should repeat all the commands in that post (taking the ownership, etc.), though i'm in doubt this will work.
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