Where are desktop icons stored?

[neuron]

Hi all

Over the last few months, young hooligans in the family have downloaded many programs off the internet onto one PC at home. It seems that during the downloads, they selected to place an desktop shortcut to most of the programs onscreen.

Now the PC concerned is set to a resolution of 800X600 and the desktop has already been filled for many months with shortcuts to existing programs installed leaving no space at all for the new icons.

I've noticed recently that every time I remove one of the desktop icons, it's immediately replaced by one of these new downloaded ones that have effectively been "waiting in the wings".

What I'd like to find out is where these "waiting" icons are being stored so I can check if they're needed or not. As it stands, most of the downloaded stuff already has it's start menu entry anyway, so there's no real need for them.

I know I could change the screen resolution to see how many more waiting icons are there, but I suspect there may be too many for even that route.

Thanks.

[Llamatron]

800x600!!!! Definitely up that.

I'll assume you're talking about XP.

Try uninstalling the programs you don't want from Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel. That would be the best way. It'll get rid of the icons and from the sound of things help clean up your machine.

Failing that look in 'C:\Documents and Settings'. There'll be a few folders in there and under each one there'll be a folder called 'Desktop'. It's in Desktop that you'll find the desktop icons.

[neuron]

Thanks Llamatron. I should have known that was where to look.

Yes, the OS is XP Pro (sorry).

I'm still puzzled about one thing though. The PC has a named account and an administrator account. In C:\D&S|All Users\Desktop there are 33 icons. In C:\D&S\My Name\Desktop there are 62 icons. Yet the desktop has a full complement of 77 icons onscreen in 800x600 mode. Why the disparity?

To make matters worse there appears to be more than one icon for a handful of programs in the desktop folder bearing my name, yet there's still not 77 icons in there. ( I think that some of these doublers may be updated versions of already installed stuff like Ad-aware, although it's not clear from the titles)

Very odd. I think you're right - a clean up is called for.

Thanks again

[captainkirk]

all i can think of is if this has been done and this pc is yours and you got it. just press f11 when you start it up and it will put it back to the time when you bought it. the only thing about this is that you have to load all the stuff you put on in the first place. the only thing it will save is your emails. i have had this happen to me a few times and it is a pain in the arse.

[stevie21]

One thing to try : Click Start > Help & Support.
Search for "remove unused desktop icons".

This might automate it a bit and remove some for you

[fo3nix]

Icons aren't limited to the screen size. Any extra icons that are there will be on your desktop, just out of view due to your small screen size.

Go into control panel then display prefs, and in the settings tab up the resolution, and you'll see all your icons.

[neuron]

Thanks folks for your help.

It looks like I need to take up fo3nix's suggestion and raise the resolution in order to delete these pesky icons from the desktop directly.

Thanks again.