Last night I shut down my computer as usual. Today I went to turn it back on and I went to the desktop. At first I didn't notice it as I only have the Recycle Bin and one other icon on my desktop. Though I just noticed that my desktop icons have disappeared. I first went to Control Panel to see if somehow the Recycle Bin icon got turned off. Nope. It is on. I turned it off, then turned it back on to see if that would fix it and nothing. I then right clicked on the desktop to see if somehow "show desktop icons" got unchecked. It was checked. I tried unchecking it and then checking it again and nothing.

I did a quick Google search and found a couple people with the same problem though no solution.

Anyone else have this issue or even know a solution? I haven't installed anything on here lately that would cause this or even do any maintenance lately. It just randomly did it today after I shutdown my computer last night after watching a video on YouTube.

That's a feature. You shouldn't have any icons on your desktop ;)

Report to MS http://connect.microsoft.com/ they may already be dealing with the bug though, best to be sure

Yes, Windows 8 is a bug ! ;)

.. But seriously, I haven't had any issues like that.

Report to MS http://connect.microsoft.com/ they may already be dealing with the bug though, best to be sure

Thanks, going to report it.

Still haven't fixed it or figured it out. Tried hiding everything then showing it again, still missing. Done everything I can think of to at least get the recycle bin back. Oh well. Hopefully they'll fix it though.

If you go to FileExplorer > Desktop, what do you see there ? Likewise, look at your C:\Users\username\Desktop folder. That's the underlying folder where all your desktop stuff resides. Can you add new files to your desktop. And can you drop files into C:\Users\username\Desktop and do they appear then on your desktop ?

If you go to FileExplorer > Desktop, what do you see there ? Likewise, look at your C:\Users\username\Desktop folder. That's the underlying folder where all your desktop stuff resides. Can you add new files to your desktop. And can you drop files into C:\Users\username\Desktop and do they appear then on your desktop ?

I didn't think about creating another shortcut to the desktop to see what would happen, though I did already check the desktop folder and it did list what was on the desktop (well not the recycle bin, but I don't think it would).

Though I just created a temporary shortcut and placed it on the desktop and all of a sudden my recycle bin and other shortcut reappeared on the right hand side (not sure why right hand side but oh well). They seem to be back but who knows if they will disappear again. Weird.

Thanks though.

I think that bug is an inherited Win7 bug. I've twice(?) had the Recycle bin disappear irrecoverably from my desktop (while the rest of my desktop icons were fine) - and I reviewed the same checkboxes you did.

I think I had to use a [s]regex[/s] [color=#a52a2a]regedit/registry fix to get it back.

I've more than twice had to use a [s]regex[/s] registry fix to get my taskbar volume icon to reappear in Windows 7 - that one is exceptionally annoying.

I think I had to use a regex fix to get it back.

I sat here for a full minute, wondering how you fix Windows via regular expressions.

Very carefully, that's how.

([size=2]Corrected previous post)