Pinned taskbar shortcuts wipe out / vanish every time I restart my PC

Hello Jack Harris,

The first step I’d suggest is checking whether you’re logging into a temporary profile. You can do this by opening File Explorer and confirming if your user folder looks normal, temporary profiles often show a message about not being able to access files. If that’s not the case, try rebuilding the taskbar cache by deleting the “IconCache.db” and “TaskbarData” files from the AppData folder, then restarting.

Another helpful step is to ensure that Group Policy or enterprise management tools aren’t enforcing a default taskbar layout. In managed environments, policies can overwrite personal pins at each login. If this is a personal device, running sfc /scannow in Command Prompt can help repair any corrupted system files that might be interfering with profile persistence.

This is usually a configuration issue rather than a hardware problem. Once the profile and cache are corrected, your pinned shortcuts should remain intact across restarts.

If you find this answer useful, please hit “accept answer” so I know it addressed your concern.

Jason.