i dont know what happened, but starting today my icons have disappeared from my desktop. They still show up in the desktop folder but they aren't on the desktop itself.
i can still see my taskbar which works, and i have "show desktop icons" checked.
i ran my computer in safe mode and they show up there, i'm not sure what else to do.

i am running windows 7 home premium, if anyone can help that would be great

Hmmm, that is odd. Just curious, uncheck auto-arrange icons (if it's checked) and drop some dummy file on your desktop. Can you see that file?

Only time I've seen your user icons disappearing from the desktop is when your user profile corrupts, but you still get the public desktop icons.

I didn't see that you rebooted. Reboot.
Edit: Actually I see that you did go into safe mode so you rebooted. That's more confirmation of the below:

If that doesn't help, watch out for anything that says you have any system problems like "hard drive failure" or something you don't recognize saying you have problems or infections. Some of those "scareware" fake antivirus or fake utility apps start off by hiding your desktop to make you think your system is failing.

If you see anything like that, please reply.

i never had that checked, i was able to drop itunes and it showed up

nope nothing like like, i have my AVG, i tried scanning for virus's with that and McAfee security scan and nothing came up.
i also scanned with the cmd prompt, also nothing found.

Next step: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/49819-icon-cache-rebuild.html.

Strange that they are showing in the desktop folder.

that wouldn't be the problem, i'm able to put things on my desktop and the icons are fine, but whatever was on my desktop originally are not there, i cant replace them either

Sounds an awful lot like a corrupted user profile. Does the dropped file appear in your profile's desktop (when navigating to the desktop in windows explorer) or no?


Here's the instructions on http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

i dropped firefox onto my desktop and yes it does appear in the desktop folder

Well, I say just move all your files from your desktop folder somewhere and then drag it onto your desktop (must store them in an intermediate location otherwise you'll get told you can't do it).

If it happens again, though, your profile is probably corrupted.

i made a desktop folder in my documents and moved everything there, then i was able to re add everything

thank guys