Desktop shortcuts to items on network drives sometimes disappear from desktop

Anonymous
2009-10-05T10:31:59+00:00

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

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2009-11-02T19:48:31+00:00

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
2015-04-30T16:17:45+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2012-02-11T16:45:47+00:00

    Thanks for answering the outstanding question of why the mapped drive shortcuts appear to be "defective".

    Ira

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-04-13T10:06:59+00:00

    Found an easily deployable workaround for this @  http://www.verboon.info/index.php/2010/11/control-windows-7-scheduled-maintenance-behavior-through-group-policy/

    Basically in group policy you can set the behaviour of the maintenance task to 'troubleshooting' only, which will still allow it to run but it will report items to the action center rather than executing them automatically.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-04-17T20:55:01+00:00

    Microsoft's theoretical fix:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2642357

    I say theoretical because I had been doing the hacks to the files (take ownership, delete/move) of the offending files. I finally found that microsoft offered a "fix". Not a "workaround" but a "fix". I was surprised, but reading the text, it seemed like they finally grasped the problem. The next machine or two I loaded for people, the hotfix patch seemed to work.

    Then I ran them on the latest machine I got. It gave an error that said that it did not apply to this operating system (W7 32bit pro). Hmmmm... perhaps one of the 47 recommended or optional patches that go onto new systems had the fix built in. I was wrong. Yesterday (a Monday, and the scheduler runs on the weekend) the new machine dumped the network shortcuts. Well, I could do it the manual way of adding the registry keys that the hotfix adds, but they were already there.

    So the fix worked on 2 machines a month or so ago but doesn't work on the most recent 2 (1 setup but not given out yet) in the last week.  Perhaps there is another cause on this machine, but the symptoms are identical.

    Guess it is back to the manual method of killing things.

    I am still astounded at Microsoft's design, execution and response on this issue. Is it that hard to put in a check box somewhere that lets you at least toggle some of the maintenance pieces into different modes or off? I think most people want the real maintenance items to run automatically, and want to turn off the desktop icon controls.

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