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

2012-04-30T13:18:48+00:00

This scheduled diagnostics task does more than just a desktop icon check. It also checks for inaccurate system time, volume errors, and a few more things. None of these are critical, but you are affecting more than just the fix you want.

Look back a few pages, I posted on how to modify the broken link count so that you are only disabling the automatic and broken "broken link" cleanup.

Either way, it's annoying that MS would be heavy-handed with desktop cleanup.
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Anonymous

2012-04-30T02:11:31+00:00

To summarise:

To stop your shortcuts dissapearing.

Click

Start

Programs

Accessories

System Tools

Task Scheduler

Click on the + next to Task Scheduler Library

Click on the + next to Microsoft

Click on the folder called Diagnoses

Right click on the task called 'Scheduled' and choose disable.

All done.
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Anonymous

2012-04-23T15:15:08+00:00

Same situation as Jerry P. Win7 Pro 32 bit ; Fix not applicable for this operating system. I had been searching for a solution to this for a while. I've just added the suggested (by MS) subkey and have my fingers crossed. Thanks to all who have contributed here.
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