Desktop Shortcuts gone missing!

Question

Hi, last night, i went to bed and everything on my desktop was normal. I left the pc open, no sleep mode, no hibernate, just idle. Today i wake up, and i look at the desktop, and half of my shortcuts to games are gone. Not all shortcuts, just half of them. And no other desktop icons where affected, like my personal folder, recycle bin, or my computer. only shortcuts, that were there 5-6 hours ago. I didn't untick the Show Desktop Icons, so thats not the problem. I had the same issue some weeks ago, but i had run CCleaner overnight, so i though that maybe it deleted them, but tonight that's was not the case. In event viewer I don't see anything wrong in the hours i was awake from the PC.

Any idea why this is happening? I know i can just create shortcuts again, but i want to know why this is happening.

Answer 1

I think i found out why only some shortcuts went missing. Some installers create a shortcut on desktop, or in Start menu, so that ones didnt get deleted. But the ones that just create a shortcut in Game Explorer, and i made a copy on desktop from the Games Explorer, they are considered invalid, even though if you click them and the open the game normally. The maintenance tools thinks they are invalid, because they point to Games Explorer.

Kind of stupid, since they work perfect, but at least i found why only half were gone.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Answer 2

So that explains it. But one question, what are the criteria to identify a shortcut broken? All of the shortcuts i had on my desktop were definitely not broken, everyone of them, launched the game it was supposed to. They were created other from the game installers, or from me, by copying a shortcut already in my start menu to desktop.

The maintenance tool also deletes "unused" (in last 3 months) shortcuts. However, there seems to be a bug with this tool which causes it to delete shortcuts that're in regular use, as well (as some users reported before.)

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Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Desktop Experience]

Answer 3

Hi miktir

Please see the following article for a possible explanation and solution.

Desktop shortcuts disappear in Windows 7

Let us know.

Thank You for using Windows 7

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Ronnie Vernon MVP

Answer 4

So that explains it. But one question, what are the criteria to identify a shortcut broken? All of the shortcuts i had on my desktop were definitely not broken, everyone of them, launched the game it was supposed to. They were created other from the game installers, or from me, by copying a shortcut already in my start menu to desktop.

Answer 5

Hi miktir

Please see the following article for a possible explanation and solution.

Desktop shortcuts disappear in Windows 7

Let us know.

Thank You for using Windows 7

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Ronnie Vernon MVP

The problem started 2 days ago after 5 years of ZERO problems.

This Answer is BS it does not work. I have ZERO broken shortcuts. And windows is deleting them INSTANTLY after creation.