Desktop Cleanup on Win 7 ????

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

So I just read that Microsoft didn't include "Desktop Cleanup" in Win7

I have shortcuts on my desktop to some storage folders on backup drives. I turn off the drives when not in use. I left my computer on all last night for the umpteenth time, with the network turned off of course, and I come back to the machine after waking up this morning, wake the screen up from sleep mode and all my shortcuts to the backup drives are gone.

I have no clue why.

Any ideas how to stop this from happening?

 

[Matt1970]

I prefer Ccleaner but disk Cleanup is still in Win7.

Windows 7 runs a regular system maintenance application that will "fix" problems with shortcuts on your desktop on a regular basis. It will remove shortcuts that have not been used in the last three months. And if you have more than four "broken" shortcuts on your desktop, it'll remove them. The problem is that it often fixes things that you don't want fixed. For example, the shortcuts may be "broken" because they point to a networked drive that is not connected at the time the maintenance application is run.

If you find your shortcuts being removed by Windows 7, there are a couple things you can do:

1) Make sure you use each shortcut at least once every three months.

2) If you have shortcuts to networked drives, limit yourself to four of them. That way if the clean up happens when you are not connected to the drive, the shortcuts will not be removed.

Also to prevent this from happening, you can turn off computer maintenance from Control Panel > Troubleshooting > Change Settings > select Off for Computer Maintenance but this would mean you would stop Windows 7 from checking volume errors, and also checking for troubleshooting history and error reports that are taking up disk space. Another method is to disable checking of unused desktop icons and broken shortcuts.

1. Install Take Ownership right click extension if you haven’t.

2. Open My Computer

and navigate to this path C:\Windows\diagnostics\scheduled\Maintenance

3. You can either delete or move this 2 files to another location on your hard drive.

TS_UnusedDesktopIcons.ps1 > For checking unused desktop icons

TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 < For checking broken shortcuts

Once both of this ps1 files are moved out of the Maintenance folder, the weekly scheduled computer maintenance will no longer check for unused or broken shortcuts and automatically remove them from your desktop.

 

[bruceb]

Here is one way to do it:
From this link:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/Windows_7/Q_25369741.html

Open Registry Editor.
In Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\Cleanup

Create the following value (DWORD):
NoRun and give it a value of 1.

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Also see this link (say Vista but should work in Win 7)

http://www.itechtalk.com/thread4943.html