Desktop Icons Missing

Question

Hi all,

Please excuse my naivety, I am a relative noob to this and I am having trouble with user profiles on our domain. I have a username that is used to sign in on multiple devices, let us say - Group1. We are using Windows Server 2008R2, which has several group policies which control desktop icons, backgrounds, right mouse clicks, etc, etc...

We recently acquired 15 new laptops to which I have created a Windows 10 Education Edition image with pre-installed software, such as VLC player, Office 2016, Adobe Reader, etc...

Each device is identical in every way, same brand, the same model, the only difference will be the serial numbers and MAC addresses. 12 of the 15 laptops can log in, see the desktop icons and the background as expected. However, the other 3 have a completely blank desktop, no app icons, and missing a background (black screen). The only icons that are showing on these 3 laptops are the "This PC - Shortcut" icon and the "Recycle Bin" icon.

I am at a complete loss as to why this is happening, I'm sure it is something simple, however, I can not see the wood from the trees. Is it me, or is there some funky voodoo magic causing the problems?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Garry F

Answer 1

Hi，

It will be helpful if you can help to collect the following information.

1, Were all the computers in the same OU or different OUs?
2, Did you deploy the GPOs on specific OUs or the domain level?
3, Check if all the computer policies were applied or not, we can use the following command:
Run CMD as administrator and run command: gpreuslt /h c:\report.html
Confirm if there are any error messages in the output.

Best Regards,

Answer 2

Hi FanFan,

Thanks for your quick reply, and apologies for not replying sooner, I had to stay at home due to a positive covid case at my place of work.

I work in an educational establishment and we are awaiting a complete upgrade of our I.T. infrastructure and I have been assigned as go-to IT guy until it has been fully deployed. I have some experience with Windows Server and deploying group policies, however, I wouldn't say I am an expert.

Ok so, there are group policies applied at the OU level. We have a GPO applied to an OU called "Pupils," which comprise Year1, Year2, Year3, Year4, Year5, and Year6. We have had 15 new PC's all of which have had a custom image with applications installed, while in audit mode. The image has an Autounattend file applied to it and has been installed via a bootable USB. So, for example, a class (Year6) will log in to the PC and the Pupil GPO will assign the settings for those PCs. However, 3 of the PCs won't populate the desktop settings- shortcuts, custom backgrounds, everything else, like disable right-click, prevent adding shortcuts to the desktop, etc, works. Now, when I log out of one of those PCs and log in as, let's say Year5, it populates the desktop just fine. When I log back into those 3 PCs as Year6 it doesn't. Also, if those same PCs all log in as Year5, again, different PCs do not populate the desktop, whereas when logged in as Year6 they do. I am at a loss really as to why it would be doing this, although, I have been wondering whether not sysprepping the image could be the problem. Maybe, something to do with the SID? Again, I am exposing my naivety in this matter, so apologies for the convoluted explanation and response.

Thanks in advance

Garry F