Disappearing Desktop Shortcuts on Windows 7

Had a bit of weird support query I wanted to blog about in case I need it again, it helps anyway else or for further comment!

Client called as she’d setup some shortcuts on her desktop to some files she uses on a regular basis and they had disappeared.

I wasn’t sure where they’d gone, maybe she’d deleted them by mistake, so put it down to one of those things and we re-created them and left it at that.

She called me about a week later with the same problem. We re-created the shortcuts again and I setup auditing on the PC to track file deletes from the desktop.

She called back about a week later with the same thing.

After I’d setup auditing I went away and did some more research and found this Microsoft support article,

Desktop shortcuts disappear in Windows 7 (KB 978980)

Basically there is a “System Maintenance Troubleshooter” task that runs periodically and one of the areas of maintenance is to tidy up broken desktop shortcuts (a shortcut whose target doesn’t exist). If it finds more than four broken shortcuts on the desktop it deletes them all.

The thing is as far as I could tell they weren’t broken shortcuts – the missing shortcuts all pointed to files on the network but they were all accessible, she uses them on a daily basis!

The annoying thing about this is the “workaround” provided by the support article.

Method 1 – Keep the number of broken shortcuts to four or less

Method 2 – Disable the System maintenance troubleshooter

Click Start and then click Control Panel

Under System and Security click Find and Fix Problems

On the left navigation pane click Change Settings

Set Computer Maintenance to Off

As far as I can tell the shortcuts aren’t broken so how can I keep them to less then four!

Disabling system maintenance is something I’m not inclined to do either.

So what to do instead?

One option is to follow the details in this post.

The system maintenance tasks are basically powershell scripts stored in c:\windows\Diagnostics\Scheduled\Maintenance

The scripts are viewable and after tweaking the permissions to allow you to edit them you can make any changes you like.

The article suggests deleting a section of the code so that it will always return an empty list of broken shortcuts hence there will be nothing to delete.

My preference is to change the parameter on the threshold for broken shortcuts as it’s a little less drastic than chopping code out.

if(-not([String]::IsNullOrEmpty($brokenDesktopShortcuts) -and [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($brokenStartupShortcuts)) -and (((Get-ListLength $brokenDesktopShortcuts) + (Get-ListLength $brokenStartupShortcuts)) -gt 100))
{

The bit in bold was 4 originally.

The comments in the article have similar suggestions including a batch file you can use to do the whole thing for you.

My only concern about this is that the scripts could be changed in a future service pack or software update and you’d end up with the same problem.

I also don’t understand why the System Maintenance Troubleshooter has no configurable options other than “On/Off”.

I haven’t actually implemented this for the customer as I provided my own couple of workarounds to try.

The first is that if you create a folder on the desktop and put the shortcuts in there the problem goes away entirely – it’s an extra click so again this isn’t always desirable.

The second is that since this Windows 7 why not make use of the “Jump Lists” feature – it’s designed exactly with this scenario in mind!

I ran through jump lists and she was very pleased with that as it was easier than having to navigate to the desktop to find the shortcuts.

Anyone else come across this? Any other suggestions for something I’m missing.

ZTE MF627 and Window7

Further to my last post on this I’ve had still had mixed results getting my Three modem to connect to my Windows 7 systems.

Now that Windows 7 is on general release I had a quick look on the Three support website and find a support article specific to my problem

A quick firmware upgrade is all that is needed

From http://www.three.co.uk/Help_Support/Mobile_Broadband_Help

If you have a ZTE MF627 and have already upgraded to Windows 7 or Snow Leopard, your modem will not work until you download the firmware updates. You will be able to install the dashboard software (and you should do this!) but you will not be able to connect. Once you have installed the dashboard, using an alternative connection, or on another computer, go to www.three.co.uk/Help_Support/About_my_mobile/Downloads and select ZTE and then MF627. You will then have the option to download the correct firmware for your modem – either Driver Setup – For Windows 7 Only or Driver Setup – For Mac 10.6 Only. Click the correct link to download the .exe/.zip file, and if you are using an alternative computer, transfer the .exe/.zip file to the computer that has Windows 7 or Snow Leopard already installed.

Plug in your modem, double click on the .exe/.zip file and follow the on screen instructions to install the firmware. It is very important that you do not remove the modem during this process, and that you do not switch your computer off before it is finished. If you have a laptop, make sure it is plugged into the wall, or you have at least an hour of battery charge left.

Once installed, remove your modem and restart your computer. Your modem will now work.

The firmware update is was straight forward to install and only takes a few minutes. It does mean you lose the whole “plug and play” aspect of Three’s mobile broadband offering but I imagine new subscribers will get devices with the latest firmware

ZTE MF627 and Windows 7

Just a quick one!

I recently acquired a 3 Mobile broadband dongle

The specific model of the dongle is ZTE MF627

When i ran the installer program on my laptop (which is running Windows 7 Professional) everything seemed to install ok but it refused to pick up the modem

I tried it on my netbook which is also running Windows 7 and had exactly the same problem

I then tested it on XP SP3 and Vista SP2 systems and they worked fine

Having decided it must be something to do with Windows 7 I tried running the connection program as administrator (as helpfully suggested by Vijay via Twitter) but this didn’t seem to make any difference for me either

So I went back to the beginning, removed the software and when i re-installed and I changed the compatibility settings to run as XP SP3 and to run as administrator (which it would have done anyway, since it was installing a program)

I did try Vista SP2 initially but this didn’t want to run at all

On my device the installer program is called “VersionControl.exe”

It then re-installed and it worked!

Now that it is installed the connection program doesn’t appear to need any compatibility settings and I’m able to connect ok

I had about three hours sleep last night though so your milage may vary

Minor Update:
When you connect to the Internet the software will automatically update.
Since the software is an auto-updater there is no way to force compatibility settings. I did an update and promptly couldn’t connect again

Uninstalled and followed my original method and i reconnected ok

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

In case you have been living under a rock Windows 7 RTM was made available to Technet and MSDN subscribers yesterday

I grabbed my ISO’s this morning and was thinking about how best to approach the upgrade on my netbook.

I then remembered that when Vista was first released there was a tool for letting you know if your system would be up to the task and thankfully there is also a Windows 7 version.

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (Beta)

Here a grab of the final report,

No major problems.

It’s suggesting I do a backup as I’ll need to do “custom install” (i.e a clean install). Since the netbook is running XP this is to be expected.

It also says that ActiveSync isn’t compatible with Windows 7. This isn’t a surprise either as it was replaced with Windows Mobile Device Manager in Vista.

At the top of the report it says that the system meets all four of the system requirements. Drilling into it you see this,

I haven’t installed any extra RAM in the netbook yet, so was pleased it didn’t kick up too much of fuss about that. I was also glad to see that it’s Aero capable!

Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend?