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

2013-02-07T19:49:46+00:00

Yes, thanks.

I think my favorite method is the "shortcut to the shortcuts in a folder" method, seconded by the "change the number of bad links from 4 to 400" method. I would prefer to leave the scheduled maintenance intact, just not have it affect my shortcuts. These two methods best accomplish the goal in my opinion.
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Anonymous

2013-02-08T15:57:36+00:00

If you support other people, you might consider Microsoft's registry fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2642357

It is the simplest method I have seen, it allows you to turn off those specific functions (broken desktop icons and unused desktop icons) and it is far simpler than any of the other technical fixes.

If you support other people, you know how difficult it can be to get others to adopt a new method (shortcut to a shortcut folder), and that you will have to fix the problems that occur when people forget and put shortcuts on the desktop.

I did find that the "Fix it for me" program in that article hasn't usually worked for me (came back with an error about incompatability).

But, the "Let me fix it myself" method (the manual method) has worked on all but one of the machines I have built. Haven't figure that one out, but the rest were fixed.

For a bonus, if you do have to build/fix a lot of machines, you can just make a registry key that you can run on each machine to install it, so that it takes a few seconds per machine to fix, or can be pushed out to all the machines at once.
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Anonymous

2013-02-13T15:16:12+00:00

I found a solution via GPO for all the domain admins out there.

http://www.verboon.info/index.php/2010/11/control-windows-7-scheduled-maintenance-behavior-through-group-policy/

"...jump over to the Group Policy management console. Under Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ System \ Troubleshooting and Diagnostics we have a Scheduled Maintenance branch that holds the Group Policy Settings for the Scheduled Maintenance Behavior.

If we want to prevent scheduled system maintenance task from automatically deleting broken shortcuts we must configure the Execution Level to Troubleshooting only."
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