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.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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.

0 comments

91 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-02-06T14:59:15+00:00

That's not a fix, Pat - it's a workaround,

I don't car what you want to call it; it's a better idea than having a maintenance tool automatically delete my customized shortcuts. I too look forward to MS fixing this issue, it's very annoying having my computer tell me what I want and being wrong about it.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2012-12-10T21:56:48+00:00
The system maintenance is one of the issues. On Saturday the process deletes icons that point to other server disks. Ex: I have many development products. For each project I have 3 icons to servers outside of the building in case of, yes fire, or whatever.

Every time I build a new computer I move along and then, yes come in on Monday and the icons are all gone. I used to be able to fix it based on blog suggestions but now they the options have been moved, hidden, who knows. I have been spending a couple of hours trying to find where you turn this off and still unable to find it.

This is different than the suggestions above, those are for standard icons. We need to know where to turn this off. There are hundreds of separate blogs with people complain about this, and it has been going on for years.

How about link to system maintenance to turn this off.

How about opt in to have the process delete your icons of the page.

I think people understand how to remove icons on their desktop if they need to. Deleting them just costs everyone a bunch of time to manually restore them.

In what way are your icons that point to other server disks not "standard icons"? Just because the point to a network location as opposed to a program makes no difference. If these are icons that point to resources that are not local to the machine, then these are exactly what the fixes above deal with.

If you build a lot of machines, I recommend installing the registry keys on one system, and then exporting those two registry keys (one for broken shortcuts, one for unused shortcuts) out into a registry file, then you can just execute that registry file on every new computer and it is done in about 3 seconds.

But if you chose to turn off system maintenance instead:

To turn off system maintenance (which turns off much more than just the desktop cleanup):
1. Click Start, , and then click Control Panel.
2. Under System and Security, click Find and fix problems.
3. On the left navigation pane, click Change settings.
4. Set Computer Maintenance to Off.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2012-12-10T18:30:03+00:00

The system maintenance is one of the issues. On Saturday the process deletes icons that point to other server disks. Ex: I have many development products. For each project I have 3 icons to servers outside of the building in case of, yes fire, or whatever.

Every time I build a new computer I move along and then, yes come in on Monday and the icons are all gone. I used to be able to fix it based on blog suggestions but now they the options have been moved, hidden, who knows. I have been spending a couple of hours trying to find where you turn this off and still unable to find it.

This is different than the suggestions above, those are for standard icons. We need to know where to turn this off. There are hundreds of separate blogs with people complain about this, and it has been going on for years.

How about link to system maintenance to turn this off.

How about opt in to have the process delete your icons of the page.

I think people understand how to remove icons on their desktop if they need to. Deleting them just costs everyone a bunch of time to manually restore them.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments