Desktop shortcuts to items on network drives sometimes disappear from desktop

It appears that I cannot change the permissions of this file due to the domain security policy, which makes this even more of a hassle :(

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

However, the automated FixIts don't work on any of my systems, so the manual method is required:

Let me fix it myself

 To disable the "Broken Shortcut" task, follow these steps:

1.Click Start, type regedit in the Search programs and files box, and then press ENTER.

 If you are prompted for an administrator password, type the password. If you are prompted for confirmation, provide confirmation.

2.Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics\

3.On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4.Type IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled, and then press ENTER.

5.Right-click IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled, and then click Modify.

6.In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.

7.Exit Registry Editor.

Let me fix it myself

 To disable the "Unused Desktop Icon" task, follow these steps:

1.Click Start, type regedit in the Search programs and files box, and then press ENTER.

 If you are prompted for an administrator password, type the password. If you are prompted for confirmation, provide confirmation.

2.Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics\

3.On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4.Type IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled, and then press ENTER.

5.Right-click IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled, and then click Modify.

6.In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.

7.Exit Registry Editor.

If you have to do this repeatedly (as in multiple installs, which I do), you might want to just make a registry key bit that you can just run to import into the registry.

If I recall, you can just export the two keys into a whatever.reg file.

Or you can just set it up in notepad and name it whatever.reg

It will look like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics]

"IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

"IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

 

 

That's it.

 

I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

I tried to create the reg file and I got a "Cannot import F:\FixShortcut.reg. Error opening the file. There may be a disk or file system error.  I copied:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics]

"IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

"IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

Do I need to do this in the 64 bit registry (Start, type regedit and hit enter) or do I need to do it in the 32 bit registry (C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32 - right click and run as admin)?

To confirm, I should use a DWORD (32 bit) value instead of a QWORD (64 bit) value if I'm manually entering it.

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

[...]

I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

I tried to create the reg file and I got a "Cannot import F:\FixShortcut.reg. Error opening the file. There may be a disk or file system error.  I copied:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics]

"IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

"IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled"=dword:00000000

Do I need to do this in the 64 bit registry (Start, type regedit and hit enter) or do I need to do it in the 32 bit registry (C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32 - right click and run as admin)?

To confirm, I should use a DWORD (32 bit) value instead of a QWORD (64 bit) value if I'm manually entering it.

If you are just doing one machine, I wouldn't bother with the registry file.   Even if you are just doing 2 or 3, I would just do them manually.  Use of a .reg file is just a step to make things easier if you have to do this on many machines.  It takes longer to get the file made then to fix one or two machines. 

The only thing the file does is the same thing as the Let Me Fix It Myself steps just a lot faster, and can do both broken and unused icons at the same time.

I believe I built the registry file by exporting the registry keys from a machine I manually fixed.   I have rarely had the need to do such things, so I may be wrong in saying that you can create it in notepad.  Or you may have extensions turned off, so the filename from notepad may be fixshortcut.reg.txt and it is only showing you fixshortcut.reg.  With a 64 bit system, you may want to export a key just to see what the file looks like. It may be formatted somewhat differently than what I showed (which was 32 bit).

The time and hassle of making the .reg file fix is why it only makes sense to mess with a registry key file if you have to fix it on several machines.  The manual fix takes a couple of minutes.  With the .reg file the same result takes a couple of seconds.  But, to build the reg file takes maybe 5-10 minutes, or longer if you have a problem building it.

On 64 bit:

I didn't write the article, I just found it and pulled the relevant information to make it a bit easier for anyone who ran across this thread.  The article makes reference to x86 and x64 so when they wrote it, they were presumably addressing both versions.  So I would say to use REGEDIT and that it would be a DWORD value.

I have only been working on 32bit systems, so that is an assumption on my part.