You open up your computer and you are taken by surprise. All your icons, links, files and other goodies from your desktop are missing. Well this could be nightmare, if you are searching for some important files that you saved on your desktop. But don’t worry it may be possible that you may get all your icons back.
By using show/hide desktop icons option
It could be possible that you might have accidently activated the hide or show desktop feature. Windows vista and windows 7 has a feature called show/hide desktop, which gives you an option for showing and hiding all your desktop icons. This feature can be found under view menu.
- Go to your desktop and right click on the screen.
- Select the view option
- From the menu select the show desktop icon option.
- Now, that’s it all your icons and files would be returned to your desktop
Getting icons back to quick launch in windows
If quick launch is feature is disabled then you will not see any icons in the task bar.
- Right click on your task bar and then click on the properties and then select the checkbox to enable quick launch and then click on apply.
- In windows 7 when you click on the properties, then select the taskbar tab. then click on the customize button in the “notification area”. Now, click on the checkbox which says “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar”. You can also configure the behavior of the quick launch icons from the same tab.
- Now check your task bar, if the icons are restored.
Manually restore the icons back
- You can also restore the icons manually if it is still missing. Open your notepad and type exactly the following text in the notepad.
- [Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop - Now save the file with .scf extension on your desktop by any name “desktop” or “my desktop”.
- Now, expand the quick launch icons and drag the file into the taskbar. The original desktop icons will be restored.
Use personalize option to restore your icons
- Right click on the empty desktop and then from the option select personalize. Or you can also select the personalize option from the control panel.
- In the personalization window, click on the “change desktop icons” on the top left corner.
- Now a desktop setting window will pop up, from the menu click the checkbox of whatever icon you want to show on your desktop.
- Then click on the apply button and then on ok.
By using registry tweak
You can also restore windows by using registry tweak.
Potential warning
This method requires editing of registry, if any mistake occurs while editing registry, it may cause instability of your system and you may be require to reinstall the windows. So, don’t use this trick if you are not sure and take help of some computer technician
Copy exactly the following text into the notepad file and save it on the desktop as settings file with .reg extension.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
“{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}”=dword:00000000
“{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}”=dword:00000000
“{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}”=dword:00000000
“{5399E694-6CE5-4D6C-8FCE-1D8870FDCBA0}”=dword:00000000
“{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}”=dword:00000000
After that double click on the file and ingress changes the registry and you also need to have administrative privileges to carry on with this method.