Win 7 Shortcuts dissapearing

KenH · August 01, 2011, 07:28:39 PM

I have installed my first Windows 7 machine, and was wondering if anyone else has experienced anything like this.

The user has various shortcuts on the desktop (unrouted, agency folder, some company rating programs, TAM, etc) most of the shortcut's point to items, on the file server, but even local shourtcuts have dissapeared. This doesn't happen every night, nor does it seem to be linked to a particular day of the week. After recreating the shortcuts, I can restart the machine, and everything is fine. I have checked, and it is the same window user profile. some mornings everything is still there, other mornings most of the shortcuts are missing..

Of course the user says she is doing nothing different, they are there in the evening, and just gone in the morning.

The computer is left on at night, running server 2003, TAM 10.7. any ideas???

Bloody Jack Kidd · August 02, 2011, 08:51:27 AM

Is some kind of desktop clean-up feature enabled?

KenH · August 02, 2011, 08:56:57 AM

Is there some automatic cleanup feature available in Win7?

Bloody Jack Kidd · August 02, 2011, 08:58:36 AM

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/ada5d392-2af7-43c3-9191-08baf63f0098/

KenH · August 02, 2011, 09:19:01 AM

Very interesting.. I'll check this out tomorrow when I am in the office.

THANKS!!!

Jeff Zylstra · August 02, 2011, 12:56:42 PM

This link says that automated maintenance cleans up broken links if there are 4 or more broken links on the desktop. I guess my question would be, why are these links considered broken? This is reminiscent of earlier posts where users were having issues with network drives losing connections on new Windows 7 machines. You may want to investigate why that's happening.

KenH · August 03, 2011, 08:46:02 AM

I am choosing option 2 of the attached solution.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978980

Turning computer maintenance would not have been my first choice, but should be a good test. Since login is disabled from this computer during the night, Windows may percieve this as broken links and "Help" by removing the shortcuts.....

Some further research seemed to indicate this is a fairly common problem, but no better solution.
Thanks for all the help.

Bloody Jack Kidd · August 03, 2011, 08:57:50 AM

It does seem strange, I'll admit, I have a ton of shortcuts on my win7 desktop and they seem to stay exactly where I put them.

Charlie Charbonneau · August 03, 2011, 09:43:58 AM

I do was well, but I don't deny login at night either... Honestly not really willing to test it to see if that is the culprit either!! Sorry Ken.

KenH · August 03, 2011, 02:33:40 PM

I guess the only thing to do now is wait and see if the problem goes away. Thanks to everyone for the help!

Gene Foraker · August 03, 2011, 07:03:43 PM

One of the articles said it is a bug with Windows. It checks to make sure desktop shortcuts are valid and if the drive is not available for the shortcut, then deletes it. One tech said the work around is to put the real shortcut in a folder in your documents folder and then have a shortcut on the desktop point to the folder shortcut. Since the desktop shortcut has a valid target, everything is OK.

KenH · August 03, 2011, 08:03:09 PM

Interesting concept, but shortcuts pointing to shortcuts. I'm going to see if just disabling this "feature" cure's the problem.

Gene Foraker · August 04, 2011, 09:05:34 AM

According to the article I read, there is no way to disable just that part. You can disable the daily cleanup routine (whatever it is called), but that is not recommended.

KenH · August 11, 2011, 11:40:28 PM

For anyone that is interested, turning the "computer maint. feature" off did solve the disappearing icon problem. It's a shame to have to do this, but I couldn't find a way to change the schedule, so doing without the feature is better than living with it.