Can't Delete Two Icons From Desktop, Any Suggestions!

Ok, I have two blank icons that belonged to two files in my desktop. I
deleted these files days ago, but the blank icons with text still show on
the desktop. When I try to delete them I get the following message from
Windows Vista Ultimate...

Could not find this item

This is no longer located in the c:\[Directory Structure That Points to my
Desktop Here]. Verify the item's location and try again.

I then have a try again button and a cancel button.

I have tried creating two text files with the exact same filenames and
extensions and it doesn't ask me to overwrite, it just creates two new files
with the same names and extensions. I can delete these two new files but the
other original two remain.

Any idea's what happened and how I can get rid of these two things?

Hi SpiderRIDER,

Sometimes these are just ghost icons and can be removed by refreshing
the desktop (F5) or restarting the computer.

Thank you for taking the time to make the suggestions.

I have tried refreshing and they are still there.
I have tried rebooting and they are still there and still can't be deleted.
I have also tried removing the program who's extension they belong to and
that still won't allow them to be deleted.

Thanks again

Hi, SpiderRIDER.

If you right-click on one of those icons and choose Properties, do you see
the path to the file in the Target box on the Shortcut tab? What do you see
if you click Change Icon on that Shortcut tab?

It points to the desktop c:\users\{my name}\Desktop

There is no properties tab. The size and size on disk is 0 bytes.

I do have security, details and previous versions tabs. Ready only isn't
checked and neither is hidden.

Hi, Robert.

I waited a couple of days, hoping some guru would jump in, but... :>(

If you open that folder, c:\users\{my name}\Desktop, do you see those icon
files? Can you delete them there? If not, what error message do you see?

Can you delete them in an Administrator:Command Prompt window? Right-click
on Cmd.exe and choose Run as Administrator; you'll have to furnish
Administrator credentials but from there on, any command or program launched
from this window will "run elevated" with Administrator privileges. I hope
you are familiar with the old MS-DOS commands because they work almost the
same way here as they always did. If not, let me know and I'll try to
explain further.

In this window, cd c:\users\{my name}\Desktop and enter Dir. Do you see
those icons listed? What exactly does Dir say about them? Can you delete
them by simply using the Del command? If not, what error message do you
see? Try Attrib *.* and see if they have any Attributes that we haven't
thought about.

And the question that probably should have been asked at the beginning of
this thread: What kind of icons? Are these for program files, data files,
drives or USB devices? Or something else?

I've Googled for "delete icons from desktop" and get 155 hits; adding +vista
narrows it down to 34; I've looked at a few but none seem to really relate
to your problem.

Yes, I see the two files listed every which way I look for them. Windows
Explorer, command prompt, etc.
They always have a size of 0.
I can't delete them from Windows Explorer
I can't delete them from the command prompt with admin privileges on.
They are data files

I am simply told that the file could not be found. I have tried creating new
files with the exact same name and new files are created but they do not
overwrite the existing ones. I am beginning to think that A) Vista is every
bit as horrible and OS as I thought it was from day one. B) I am going to
have to format and reinstall to get rid of two 0 bytes files that I deleted
weeks ago but can't seem to get rid of.

[henry2304]

Have you run CHKDSK on that drive? Couldn't hurt, could it? At least once
before you format and re-install.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode and trying to delete them from there?

Too bad we've progressed so far from the simple FAT days when we could have
used DiskEdit from the REAL Norton Utilities to zap the bits in the FAT and
in the directory!

And I'm surprised and disappointed that nobody has come up with an idea yet.

I think I have a solution to the problem. It worked for my machine at least. Hope it works for you too. I had a file on my desktop like you had, say abc.ext, that I could not delete/rename/modify/etc because Vista said it did not exist. To fix the problem, I created a new text file on my desktop and renamed it to the same name, abc.ext . Even though the name was the same as the un-deletable file on my desktop, Vista did not complain, and showed two files on the desktop with the same name. Now, with this new file in place, if you rename the old un-deletable file to something new like "test", you can delete it!! (If you just try to remove the old un-deletable file, it causes the *new* file you just created to be deleted oddly enough, so one is still left with the un-deletable file). This solution worked for me, and hope it works for you too! Let me know if it does

I missed the first part of this discussion, but here's my compilation of
fixes I've found so far. Some have been mentioned already, others not:

One possible answer is that the Windows Search feature is indexing the
file, which prevents you from deleting it. Try disabling the feature via
the Services tab of msconfig (type that into the Run window). Restart,
and see if you can delete the file.

Another possibility is that the Thumbnail generator built into Windows
is accessing the file but can't render a thumbnail. Try disabling
thumbnails altogether: in any folder, click Organize, Folder and Search
Options, the View tab, and check "always show icons, never thumbnails."
Restart (shouldn't need to, but just to be sure) and retry deleting.

If still no luck, you might try programs like Unlock (just google it)
that give you improved access to "in use" files. I haven't tried this
one, but others had good luck with it.

Here's another option: uninstall the program that contains the codec
used to open the file you can't delete. For example, if you can't delete
a .mov file, uninstall Quicktime and try deleting again. You can
reinstall the program when the unwanted file is gone.

Finally, a strange solution, one that saved me very recently: try to
delete the file, and wait for the "recycling" window to appear. While
it's up, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Task Manager. Disable the
task explorer.exe and wait a moment; your desktop will disappear.
Reinable explorer.exe (click File, New Task, and type explorer.exe) and
your desktop will reappear. Right-click the desktop and choose refresh
(just to be sure). Now try to delete the file again. It worked for me!

I had the same problem when I uninstalled a program which did not delete
the desktop icon. Right-clip properties of the icon indicated that it
was in desktop folder, but it wasn't there.

Look on the Start Menu (Programs/YourProgramFolder) and see if it's
there. If it is, you should be able to delete it simply by
right-clicking its icon and select delete, or delete the entire program
folder if it's in a folder that the uninstaller should have deleted but
didn't.

The icon probably resides in the folder C:\Program
Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\YourProgramFolder.
YourProgramFolder is the name of the folder that the icon relates to. To
get there, run Windows Explorer in administrator mode (right click on
Explorer and choose 'Run as Administrator'). Delete the entire
YourProgramFolder and the icon should be deleted from the Start Menu and
the Desktop. You may have to reboot for it to take effect.

It was driving me NUTS till I figured it out, but I KNEW there had to
be a way short completely reinstalling the O/S. My problem originated by
an older program with an uninstall routine that is not fully compatible
with Windows Vista. Hope this helps.

[franknark]

Several days ago I had a desktop with 9 live, working icons at the bottom of the desktop. ie: recycle bin, computer, network, control panel, etc. The 9th icon was a folder called 'powershell'.

Several days ago I deleted the 'powershell' folder, and, underneath that folder, was surprised to find a dead copy of the 'powershell' folder. The deleted 'powershell' folder was in the recycle bin, and an undeleted copy on the desktop.

This dead copy cannot be accessed with selection, left-click, or right-click operations - so the 'Properties' info cannot be displayed.

Left, right, up, down arrow keys cannot move an icon selection area to this dead icon.

A desktop refresh has no affect - a restart has no affect.

The C:\Users\frank\Desktop directory list does not show the dead folder.

Creating a new desktop folder with the same name 'powershell' does not upset vista.

This can be done either on top of the dead folder or somewhere else on the desktop. Deleting the live 'powershell' has no affect on the dead 'powershell' folder.

It turns out that all 9 live icons were covering 9 dead icons.
When a selection area is drawn around the 9 icons, and the area with 9 icons moved up to the middle of the screen, the 9 dead icons remain.
None of them can be accessed or deleted.

The live icons all work normally.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Michael - thanks for your quick reply.

In my case I have 9 dead icons that are hiding beneath 9 normal icons. I can select the 9 normal icons and move them up and then see the 9 dead copies that remain and don't move.

I went to 'folder options' and am now displaying the system files.

Very interesting. I now see two desktop.ini files on my desktop and one desktop.ini file in C:\Users\frank\Desktop.

The desktop.ini file in C:\Users\frank\Desktop has 17 lines of code, as does one of the ini files on the desktop.

The second desktop.ini file on the desktop has only 2 lines of code, and doesn't have a matching file in C:\Users\frank\Desktop.
the 2 lines of code:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21799

Public\desktop has a desktop.ini file with the following 2 lines of code:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21799

The larger desktop.ini file on frank\Desktop:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=desktop
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183
[LocalizedFileNames]
Pictures.lnk=@shell32.dll,-21779
...

your data:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21769
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183

The desktop.ini with only two lines of code and no IconResource line is maybe suspect.

But I think I'll sleep on it before I do any experiments.

Thanks again for your help.

are we talking about 2 icons or 9 icons????

generally:
show the hidden and system files. Look on your desktop for a 'desktop.ini'
file look at it should be simple for the desktop
on mine:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21769
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183

also check the /users/public/public desktop for possible items

To clarify, I also have two desktop.ini

C:\Users\Walraven\Desktop\desktop.ini is
<<blank line>>
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21769
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183

C:\Users\Public\Desktop\desktop.ini is
<<blank line>>
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell 32.dll,-21799

I THINK the public one is done first then the logged in user one.
the .ini file can be used to create desktop icons, rename files (that
confused me a whole lot on one problem) and lots of stuff in the appearance
realm. Be sure to back up the .ini file (s) before you set them to a default
so effects can be changed. I think you will need to reboot (at least log
out/in) for the changes to be effective.

For instance the LocalizedFileNames allow the displayed name for a file to
be different (the name for the actual 'Pictures.lnk" may be display
differently based on the language used). (If you use non-english setup then
extra entries in .ini would be normal.)

I'd like to add and update the rest of the world that for me too it was
the faithful "Unlocker" that helped solve this crappy problem for me
too.

I faced this issue with 5 PDF file icons that just won't let go of my
desktop, and remained sticky like ghost icons - can't delete, can't
rename.. if i tried downloading and overwriting with the original
content or creating a new file with same name, deleting one would still
leave one ghost icon always..

So finally, it was just the Unlocker tool that came to my rescue and
after weeks, finally got rid of those icons..! :) kudos..

[mack11]

try the following in the command prompt

del “\\?\%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\[copy and paste your annoying file name]”

hope it works.