Ok, so I looked closer at onedrive and now am simply more confused. Several links suggested "moving desktop out of onedrive." Well I look there and there's no desktop icon, there are some file folders, most with inaccessible files, I click on them and am told syncing is turned off so I can't reach them. (The computer is a hand-me-down from my wife, who upgraded to another laptop; asking what she did is pointless, she knows less about file systems than I do but sometimes just follows some instructions presented to her and sets something up.) I tried deleting several empty folders, but some I was told I couldn't delete. One file I could move outside to the desktop, and on a lark I changed its file name--it didn't shift to the upper left! But then I tried it on another file already there and it shifted.
So maybe it has something to do with onedrive, but I don't understand what it could be. It tells me I'm neither signed in or syncing with anything.
When you took over that computer did you use a new profile? If not, I suggest you create a new LOCAL account (a single word like just your first or last name is best) and make it type Administrator. Log in with that new account, check that everything works correctly and then just open C:\Users\oldaccount and move the files you want to your C:\users\username.