No desktop icons Windows 7

lopdog

Posts: 275   +1
Hi

A few days ago I started to have trouble with my desktop icons (Windows 7, x64). The symptoms are exactly as described by Microsoft on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555363#appliesto, except I cannot rightclick on my desktop, and this article is written for Windows XP. Gadgets are showing up normally. After a restart everything works normally, for a while. I can't really tell when the icons disappear. Right now I tried to change desktop background through Control panel, and now I have two images merged together on my desktop. Weird.

Any suggestions as to what could be the reason for this?
 
I would first scan for malware / viruses.

Try Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html). After an update and a complete scan, fix anything that it finds.

After this, do a full scan with your antivirus. If in doubt and you need a free one, try Avira, I am pretty pleased with it.

Last, try to run sfc /scannow from an elevated Command Prompt. For this, type cmd in the searchbox in the start menu, you will have one result. Right click it and choose "Run as administrator". This scans for missing or corrupted system files.

It is VERY important that you scan for malware or viruses. This is the first thing you do when stuff starts disappearing, or stop working all of the sudden etc.
 
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