Showing all desktop items

This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
display does not reflect the truth...

"Jason" wrote

| This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
| reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
| open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
| display does not reflect the truth...
|
A lot of items on the desktop? I don't know about Win10,
but I've had the same symptoms on XP when I fill up the
desktop. Sometimes a right-click - Refresh works, sometimes
not. Sometimes I've found that Explorer has "placed" the icons
offscreen! So I have to go into the desktop folder, move the
files elsewhere, then move them manually to an open spot
on the desktop. The solution has been to simply not fill up
the desktop too much. If I really want a large number of files
handy for work I'm doing, I put them into desktop folders by
category.

On the other hand, XP predates Microsoft's odd decision that
people should not want icons on the desktop, as though Bill
Gates had been possessed by the ghost of a highly neurotic
housewife. If I remember correctly, I had to change some
setting in Win7 to make Windows stop its bizarre housecleaning
behavior. There may be similar settings in Win10.

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 09:54:12 -0400, Jason
wrote:

This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
display does not reflect the truth...

I've have this happen occasionally, for no obvious reason. Press F5 to
refresh the screen and the missing icons will return. No need to
reboot.

Jason wrote:

This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
display does not reflect the truth...

I've found switching screen resolutions can sometimes result in desktop
icons positioned outside the bounds of the screen. For example, I play
a video game (Thief Dark Mod) which crashes a lot. When it crashes, it
screws up the gamma of the Windows desktop (since it didn't exit, it
didn't restore the original gamma and I'm stuck with the gamma setting
used within the game), so I have to logoff and back in. Used to be able
to use AMD's video driver software to reset the colors but that doesn't
work anymore, so I have to log out and in.

Because the game runs at a different resolution than the desktop, there
would be a resolution switch when I exit out of the game, but not if the
game crashes. Desktop icons can be positioned outside the visible
screen area. Instead of trying to get them back inside the viewable
area, I use DesktopOK to restore the icon positions. When I have the
desktop setup how I want, I take a snapshot with DesktopOK. I use a
batch file now to load the video game which runs DesktopOK to restore
the desktop setup. I can also use the tray icon (normally hidden) for
DesktopOK to restore the default icon layout.

While this game crashes too often (usually the result of a poorly coded
fan mission), I play it often, so I needed something to restore the
desktop icon layout when the game crashes. Game software is probably
the most deliberately poorly designed software. Having to add code to
actually check for the return code of a called function and adding code
for graceful error recovery would slow the game, and those writing fan
missions often don't know about the quirks or faults of the engine.
DesktopOK works well, but there are lots of these layout snapshot tools
to restore the desktop. DesktopOK is free, it works well even under
Windows 10, it's simple, it has a CLI (command-line interface) to let me
call it from a command line in a batch file, so I've stuck with it.

There are other desktop layout tools that have more features, like
Stardock's Fences, but I've never need to have my desktop icons grouped
to let me move or manage the icons as groups. I don't pollute my
desktop with tons of icons. Except for temporary use, I typically have
only 7 desktop icons: my personal folder, This PC (aka My Computer),
Control Panel (until someday Microsoft ever gets around to converting
all Control Panel apps into the Settings app), Network, Recycle Bin, a
folder for cloud storage services (OneDrive, Google Drive), and a
shortcut to the web browser (although I also have one in a toolbar in
the taskbar versus wasting space pinning it to the taskbar which doesn't
give ready indication if the app is loaded or not). Any other shortcuts
on the desktop only survive maybe a week or two and are usually to-do
reminders or notes, so they're gone after the to-do item is completed:
once I no longer need the iconified shortcut, it's gone. But other
users like to pile tons of shortcuts on their desktop, and that's where
more robust layout managers come in handy. Fences isn't free, but it's
cheap at $10. It has a 30-day trialware version. Others here might
come up with other desktop layout manager suggestions.

Just to check, might you be using a virtual-sized down-sampled desktop
resolution via your video software? For example, while my monitor and
video card (and even the onboard video via CPU, if used) support a
native resolution of 2560x1440, the AMD Adrenalin software has its
Virtual Super Resolution (VSR, https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/vsr)
feature that allows programs (mostly games) to run at a higher
resolution than the monitor or video support (up to 5120x2880 for me)
and then down-samples to the monitor's native resolution. It lets those
games that support the higher resolution to run at a higher resolution
than the monitor can support. That lets you, for example, running a 4K
game on a 2K monitor. You take a hit on the FPS, but can result in a
nicer display of the game. I haven't played around with VSR although I
did enable it in case I ever want to use it. Because it is faking out
the screen resolution, perhaps it's possible some resolution switch
could result in improper icon layout; i.e., you're stuck displaying the
higher resolution because it's no longer getting down-sampled to the
monitor's native resolution.

There are other ways to get a bigger screen than what your monitor
supports. For example, screen magnification means you get a view "port"
to a portion of a larger screen. Everything shown is enlarged, but you
only get to see a portion of the entire "screen" (where "screen" is the
total desktop versus the view port you see within the confines of the
physical screen of the monitor). This is the opposite of VSR: instead
of having a program run at a higher resolution that is downsized to the
physical screen of the monitor, you are making the desktop bigger than
the monitor can display and moving around a view port to see a portion
of the logical screen within the monitor's physical screen.

Another possibility since the problem occasionally appears after a
Windows startup is that a startup program is causing the problem. I've
seen those change the screen resolution, like you see a flicker in the
desktop when they load. Because they are changing the screen resolution
and then hopefully back, Windows might be trying to rearrange the icon
layout in the first resolution switch but not get enough time to
rearrange them back after the second resolution switch or even trigger
on the second resolution switch. Disable all startup programs and
retest.

In article ,
am says...

I've have this happen occasionally, for no obvious reason. Press F5 to
refresh the screen and the missing icons will return. No need to
reboot.

Bingo! F5 did it. Thanks.

On 8/12/19 8:31 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Jason" wrote

| This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
| reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
| open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
| display does not reflect the truth...
|
A lot of items on the desktop? I don't know about Win10,
but I've had the same symptoms on XP when I fill up the
desktop. Sometimes a right-click - Refresh works, sometimes
not. Sometimes I've found that Explorer has "placed" the icons
offscreen! So I have to go into the desktop folder, move the
files elsewhere, then move them manually to an open spot
on the desktop. The solution has been to simply not fill up
the desktop too much. If I really want a large number of files
handy for work I'm doing, I put them into desktop folders by
category.

On the other hand, XP predates Microsoft's odd decision that
people should not want icons on the desktop, as though Bill
Gates had been possessed by the ghost of a highly neurotic
housewife. If I remember correctly, I had to change some
setting in Win7 to make Windows stop its bizarre housecleaning
behavior. There may be similar settings in Win10.

If your question as to the number of icons on the OP's desktop is the
issue, this might work:

The current Mac OS Mojave, has a feature called stacks. I have some
friends who clutter their desktop with icons. Just drives me nuts, I
can't find anything on the desktop when I try to help them.

This is what it does: An analogy... Let's say you get variety of
printed newspapers daily. To make
a specific newspaper easy to find, you spread them across a table, but
there's no room for anything else. And you need to use the table to fix
that toaster. You gather up all those newspapers and put them in a
"stack" on the corner of the table, and you have room.

The Stacks option does a similar thing with your desktop icons. It
gathers all the similar type of files and puts them in a stack. I have
a stack for Documents (3 items), PDF Documents (38 items), Images (14
items), Movies (13 items), Screenshots (27 items), and a couple of
others. Imagine what my screen would look like if all those icons were
spread out across the screen. LOL

Let's say I want a PDF document. Left click on the PDF stack, and all
the PDF icons are arranged on the screen. When I'm finished with that
document, left click on the stack, and all the icons are "put away".

If the OP's situation is too many icons to fit, maybe there's a 3rd
party utility for Windows that does something similar to stacks.

I've been experimenting with different screen resolutions as a solution
for users with macular degeneration, and VanguardLH's observation is
correct as to what can happen with icons is correct.



--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.5
Firefox 67.0.4
Thunderbird 60.7
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Jason wrote:
In article ,
am says...
I've have this happen occasionally, for no obvious reason. Press F5 to
refresh the screen and the missing icons will return. No need to
reboot.

Bingo! F5 did it. Thanks.

F5 is generally your friend, and refreshes things
like network views too.

At one time, a certain version of Windows was riddled with
refresh bugs. Users in that situation, could wear off the
F5 logo on their keyboard key, from having to press it so much :-/

Microsoft put on a big effort to fix the refresh issues
in File Explorer. They largely succeeded, except the
topic is a lot like "swatting flies", and occasionally
a fly gets away.

I wouldn't have thought of that for a missing icon problem.

You might still find bugs like this, if a folder has
more than around 60,000 files or so. If you delete
some files from the folder, you might discover that
File Explorer doesn't want to compute the view again.
And F5 will be your friend (at least in terms of
triggering a refresh). Whether the refresh completes,
is a completely different matter (could get the spinning
wheel of death as File Explorer decides not to come back).

Paul

In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

I have some
friends who clutter their desktop with icons. Just drives me nuts, I
can't find anything on the desktop when I try to help them.

they probably know where on the desktop it is, because they put it
there.

however, that doesn't matter. do a search and let the computer do the
work of finding whatever it is you want to find. the computer is there
to do work *for* you, not the other way around.



Let's say I want a PDF document. Left click on the PDF stack, and all
the PDF icons are arranged on the screen. When I'm finished with that
document, left click on the stack, and all the icons are "put away".

or just do a search for pdf files, perhaps narrowing it down to only
ones created within a particular time period or containing a particular
word or phrase or whatever other criteria may be appropriate.

again, the computer is there to do work *for* you.

"Jason" wrote in message
...
This happens occasionally and then, sometimes, clear itself up after a
reboot or two: some icons created on the Desktop don't show up. If I
open the Desktop folder in the file manager everything is listed. The
display does not reflect the truth...


Right click & Refresh.

Also works to clear the Homegroup icon if it shows up.

--
Regards
wasbit