One of our students ran into trouble the other night with her desktop icons disappearing, right along with her Start Button and taskbar. In the end, we were able to help her get them back, but thought we would share the process in case others are running into the same thing.

Operating System: Windows XP

The most common reason desktop icons disappear is that they have been shut off. Right-click on your desktop. Click on Arrange icons and from there click on Show desktop icons. It should have a check-mark beside it. This function acts like a toggle switch. Click on it once and it goes away. Click on it again and it comes back.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the problem.

People can also hide their taskbar and move it. If you right-click on your taskbar and choose Properties, you'll discover an option for "Auto-Hide." Turning on auto-hide means that the taskbar stays out of sight unless you mouse over it, at which point, it pops up and is visible. However, people can also click, hold, and drag their taskbar to another part of the screen so that it is positioned on any one of the other sides of the monitor. If you combine that with auto-hide, users will be positive that their computer doesn't work when, in fact, it is perfectly fine.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the problem for our student, either.

Users can also run into problems if they resize their display. If someone goes changes their display dimensions dramatically, you may find yourself having to scroll around the screen to locate familiar icons.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the problem for our student, either.

Okay - once you've left the realm of common, easy to change things, you enter the world where you really have to start paying attention to the subtle details of what was happening in this case. Anyone who has stretched the memory limitations of their machine or who has upset Windows Explorer has run into the situation where the desktop icons and taskbar disappear. I can cause this to happen on my machine in an instant if I plug in a particular brand of thumbdrive into my USB2.0 hub. I have to unplug it to get things to return to normal.

What our student indicated was that she could get to the Task Manager and could even start other programs through it. It sounded like she had something upsetting Windows Explorer just as I had in my thumbdrive case. To test this out, we had her click on the Processes tab in the Task Manager. She had to locate Explorer.exe in the list and then click End Process. Once she it had stopped, she had to click on File and then Run and type in explorer.exe in the box and hit enter. That restarted Windows Explorer after we had her end the cranky version. As hoped, her icons and taskbar reappeared.

She soon discovered that her attempting to dial into the Internet with her modem was the source of the problems with Windows Explorer. Once her dialing program started up, everything else shut down! No matter how bizarre, there usually is a logical reason for icons to disappear. Discovering what it is can test your patience a bit.