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You cannot find your desktop icons?

Posted By : Eramilde of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on March 18, 2005

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when I reinstalled my windows operating system all of my programs are still there in the computer but I can not access them. there are now no shortcuts on my desktop

what do i do

This question was answered on March 18, 2005. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Please read this article by Microsoft:

Your Desktop Icons Are Missing in Windows XP

Article ID : 330170

Last Review : April 29, 2003

Revision : 1.0

This article was previously published under Q330170

On this page

SYMPTOMS

CAUSE

RESOLUTION

STATUS

MORE INFORMATION

SYMPTOMS

All the icons may be missing from your desktop However, if you open your Desktop folder in Windows Explorer, you can see your desktop icons in that window.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs if the Show Desktop Icons feature is turned off.

Note If you upgrade a previous version of Windows to Windows XP, and Show Desktop Icons was turned off in the previous Windows version, this setting is maintained, and user icons appear to be missing from the desktop The Show Desktop Icons setting is ignored in previous versions of Windows if Active Desktop is turned off In Windows XP, Active Desktop is always turned on and cannot be disabled.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this behavior, turn on the Show Desktop Icons feature: 1 Right-click the desktop

2 Point to Arrange Icons By

3 Click Show Desktop Icons

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

By default, the Show Desktop Icons feature is turned on for clean installations of Windows XP, but the Recycle Bin is the only icon that is put on the desktop If you upgrade a previous version of Windows to Windows XP, all user icons remain on the desktop By default, the My Computer, My Network Places, Internet Explorer, and My Documents icons are no longer put on the desktop for clean installations or upgrades To add the My Computer, My Network Places, Internet Explorer, and My Documents icons back to your desktop: 1 Right-click the desktop, and then click Properties

2 On the Desktop tab, click Customize Desktop

3 Under Desktop icons, click to select the check boxes of the icons you want to view

4 Click OK two times

About the author

Posted by Eramilde of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on March 18, 2005

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