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

Hello. I am a Vista Ultimate user and seeking for some help from you all guys. There were two shortcut icons on my desktop associated with two different files which were saved in my D drive. . I deleted those two files couple of days ago but since then I am trying to delete their shortcut icons from the desktop but every time it gives me an error message saying:

“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.”

As per troubleshooting I tried restarting the pc several times, tried creating two text files with the exact same filenames and extensions and it doesn't ask me to overwrite, instead it creates two new files. Any idea how can I delete those icons? And more than that what is problem with those icons?

Many times possibly your desktop wont refresh automatically and hence such icons remain visible. These are actually called as Ghost Icons. When you manually refresh the desktop, they disappears. Hence try to press F5 icon and see if they are gone.

I appreciate your help Stel but i guess you dint read my post properly. I have already mentioned that i am trying to delete those files since past two daya and have already restarted my computer several times. Dont you thing restarting the system refreshes the desktop? Anyways, i have tried your suggesting (refreshing F5) but that dint helped either.

Any other idea please?

Hello Fatmeer, Can you tell me what do you see when you right click those icons and go in to their Properties? Can you see the path to the file in the Target box on the Shortcut tab in properties? Also when you click "Change Icon" on that Shortcut tab what do you see?

Thanks for the reply. 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.

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

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\shell32.dll,-21799

Public\desktop has a desktop.ini file with the following 2 lines of code:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.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.

Show the hidden and system files. Look on your desktop for a 'desktop.ini' file look at it should be simple for the desktopon mine:

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21769
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183

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

try the following in the command prompt

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

hope it works.

I had same problem but mine was the Contacts folder.

I right-clicked and clicked Create Shortcut. The Contacts folder disappeared and a Shortcut to Contacts popped up on the top left. I could then delete that.

Hope it works for someone else too.

Had the same problem, a file with no extension, which could not be found (by vista) and thus deleted. Tried a lot of things, was planning to reinstall windows, but was saved the trouble by using "unlocker". Could not delete the file directly, but it did work on the folder the file was in. Hope this helps.

I have been through such problem in past and here is what helped me to get rid of the same permanently:

• Right click the file which you can't delete.
• Create a zip of the file.
• Now right click and delete the problem file or shortcut.
• Right click and delete zip of problem file.
• Empty Recycle bin.

Okay I fought with my pc when I put 2nd life on my computer then decided I din't like it so I rmoved it from my pc but was left with the icon on my desktop. I tried over and over to remove it then decided to right click on it and where it says send to......compressed file and boom it disappeared

I am sure it is does not disappear, it might have been converted to zip archive. The method is good of compressing the file and then deleting. But it is a matter of concern why you are not able to delete it normally. I had faced a issue when I was not able to move a folder to recycle bin. Later on I found that it is because of virus who had changed by file permission.