Desktop icons missing or disappeared

Posted on August 4, 2008 at 5:34 am

Were you working on your computer and suddenly find all of your Windows XP desktop icons missing? This has happened to me before and it can be very annoying! In most cases everything disappears, including your Start Button and Taskbar!

Normally in order to get out of this situation, you have to restart your computer and hope that whatever cramped up XP is now gone. Your icons can be missing from your desktop for two reasons, either something has gone wrong with the explorer.exe process, which handles the desktop, or the icons are simply hidden.

The latter method is easier to fix. First, right-click on the desktop and choose Arrange Icons By. Next check the Show Desktop Icons item.

Pretty simple! But unfortunately, that’s normally not the reason why your desktop icons are missing. The second method involves restarting the explorer process without having to restart Windows.

Press CTRL + ALT + DEL and click on Task Manager.

Now in the Task Manager, you want to click on File and then New Task (Run). Make sure you are on the Processes tab.

In the Open box, go ahead and type in explorer.exe and click OK.

That’s it! This will cause the registry to be reloaded and hopefully get your desktop icons, taskbar, and Start Button back!

If these methods do not work, you may have something corrupted in Windows that requires some messier tactics. I would suggest running System File Checker, which will check for missing and damaged Windows files and repair them. You can run it by going to Start, run, typing CMD and then typing sfc /SCANNOW.

Hope it helps! Let me know if you were able to get your icons back or not! Enjoy!

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

25 Responses to “Desktop icons missing or disappeared”

Shivaranjan said on : August 4th, 2008 at 7:11 am

I have encountered this error before and use the same technique to restore them back. Windows Vista seems to be better of with this issue as till now i have not encountered this problem in Windows Vista

Stephen said on : August 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am

Hi there,

I have this problem but i cannot see the start button or click on anything so i cannot go to start and run a scan. And when I hold down ctrl alt and del it just starts the shut down proccess without even asking me if I want to shut it down… Please help!!?? My girlfriend needs it to get a job asap!!

Cheers,
Stephen

Wendy said on : August 26th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

None of the above fixes worked. I went in my document and settings\desktop folder and launched one item out of that folder. After I closed that one item all of my icons came back.

Kaleel said on : August 27th, 2008 at 6:11 am

Hi..

Thanks for your piece of info. It worked well in windows Vista as well.

kaleel

Ron said on : January 16th, 2009 at 11:11 pm

I too was having a hell of a time repairing a non bootable desktop after logging into Windows Xp Pro.
Was hit with a Brontok.x worm and after much researching and hitting and missing I came across a Removal Tool from Bit Defender
http://www.bitdefender.com/sit.....movalTool/
Selected the Brontok.a from the list and run it in the affected computer and pressco the Desktop appeared and also the missing Folder Options under the Tools menu of Explorer.
Hope this assists the next person in fixing these unwanted problems.
Cheers
Ron

Edward said on : January 17th, 2009 at 1:27 am

that trick works temporarily for me,im using vista and it works everytime but i have to do it EVERY TIME i turn my computer on,please advise?

Cinthya said on : February 5th, 2009 at 1:46 am

This worked out but it wasn’t a permanent fix. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this permanent.

Kathleen said on : February 16th, 2009 at 12:33 am

thanks! worked well enough to move files off and re-install windows.

amy said on : February 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am

ANTIVIRUS 360 is horrible. I got it 4 days ago and I cannot get rid of it…Microsoft Tech support did not help, infact I have a feeling they made it worse. I cannot even seem to access my desktop or view any of my icons. Therefore, I cannot install/uninstall or anything. Please help someone it would be much apppreciated.

Before all my icons vaished I did download Malwarebytes, went through that whole process and found over 100 infected items, and the next day my screen went BLUE with some error messages…..I ran Malware bytes again (all of this done on SAFE MODE) found 10 items infected, restarted and then say my beautiful desktop for the last time before a BLUE screen appeared. Called again, downloaded something called “CompleteFix” I’m not to sure about the name which was supposed to totally remove any infections etc…and while it was running its fixes, my computer stalled and I had to manually restart it which disrupted the whole point of the program. Now I am stuck with nothing, no desktop, icons, internet, and files.

Please contact me if you have any suggestions at all. I’m hopeless at this point

Drae said on : March 8th, 2009 at 7:36 am

My hero! Thank you so much.

tony said on : March 26th, 2009 at 12:05 am

hey! thanks man!!! my problem gone! appreciate u share this with us.

Kate said on : March 27th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

Thank you so much! Worked like a charm.

Jill said on : April 7th, 2009 at 6:40 am

Thanks – much more helpful than the Windows website.

Diding said on : April 13th, 2009 at 11:04 pm

Thanks a lot…God bless u…=) My desktop icons are no longer missing!

Amina said on : June 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am

My desktop icons were gone from my laptop after I removed a particularly nasty virus/spyware. I thought the virus took my icons with it! I got on my other computer and did a search and found this page, and it worked like a charm! Thanks sooo much!

Anon said on : June 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 pm

LOL I can’t believe that my show desktop icons box was unchecked. that’s it? WOW!

tricia said on : June 20th, 2009 at 12:33 am

thanks a lot! i thought it’s a major problem i encountered… explorer.exe did it. i love forums like this.. really helps a lot!

shigin said on : June 25th, 2009 at 11:13 am

When i was copying a dvd, my mother switched off the computer mistake. After that when I log into Windows, I can only see the wallpaper! All desktop icons disappeared (my computer, my documents) everything went! what to do now?

Daniel said on : August 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Thanks very much, now if my desktop icons ever disappear again I’ll know what to do.

Thanks again!

Gary said on : September 4th, 2009 at 7:51 am

A variant on the Task Manager solution worked for me. First, look for an “existing” explorer process running in task manager. End this process, then select File – New Task(Run…)- enter EXPLORER in the task box and your desktop icons magically reappear. Apparently, the old explorer task is what gets corrupted. Ending process and starting a new process reloads it correctly in the registry.

Fred said on : September 26th, 2009 at 10:08 am

I have the same problem of no icons and no start button or task bar after rebooting with XP. I tried entering Explorer.exe in the “New TAsk (run) window of the processes tab but got a “Windows cannot find “explorer.exe” message. My wife is getting my bed ready in the doghouse if I don’t get this fixed asap.
Thanks for any other help.

Bo said on : September 26th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

Hi! Does anyone have suggestions for someone who can’t open exe files and their desktop icons have disappeared? Everytime I type explorer.exe in the new task(run) field a box pops up saying choose the program you want to use to open. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated…

tabreize said on : September 27th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

i use vista business. Never encountered any virus/worm on my pc. Have AVG & windows defender. Today i switced on my laptop (on internal battery)after an unusually long break of 7-8 days. I entered my password, and the next thing i see is only my desktop-background picture with only ‘COMPUTER’ and ‘RECYCLE BIN’ icons available, all other icons gone, and a 4-line message saying that my win/system32/…/desktop is not available (or probably ‘could not be found’). Start menu was available however.

Shocked, the first thing i did was to switch off my system and then restarted it (this time, on external battery). I dont know how, but on restart, everything came back! Makes me really worried. Can anyone plz comment on what that was, & chances of its recurrence?

john said on : October 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am

Please help, Tried explorer.exe trip but it didn’t work. explorer.exe was not listed so went down the create new task etc. That still didn’t work. Any more suggestions please.

Dinesh said on : November 3rd, 2009 at 7:10 am

If anyone faces same desktop icons missing with windows vista, try this method, sysprobs.com/windows-vista-desktop-icons-missing