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Shortcuts on Desktop

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7 replies

by mburtonjac

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I plugged in an external drive to copy music and files to hard drive. I opened the folder clicked select all and copy to desktop. Now I have hundreds of shortcut I-cons on my desktop that will not delete permamently. I have tried putting them all in a folder to delete through recycle bin. I have Deleted each to recycle bin. Tried deleting one at a time using Shift + delete. I tried Cntrl + Z. Each time I delete permanently and they delete from my desktop, when I reboot they all come back! Oh yeah! I even plugged external drive back in and attempted all the above steps with no luck!

Please Help!

Mary

7 replies

by Former member

Before you open the System Restore console, you may want to save your work and close all programs since System Restore requires you to restart your computer.

There are two ways to access System Restore through Help and Support or through your All Programs folder.

Through Help and Support:

1.

Click Start, and then click Help and Support.

2.

Under Pick a Task, click Undo changes to your computer with System Restore.

3.

Follow the instructions on the wizard.

Through the All Programs menu:

1.

Click Start.

2.

Point to All Programs.

3.

Point to Accessories.

4.

Point to System Tools.

5.

Click System Restore.

6.

Follow the instructions on the wizard.

Creating a restore point can be useful any time you anticipate making changes to your computer that are risky or might make your computer unstable. If something goes wrong, you select the restore point you just created and Windows XP undoes any system changes made since that time.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by mburtonjac

I tried that also. System restore will not restore, says drive E is un-plugged. I tried 15 different dates to restore.

by mburtonjac

Drive E is the drive I plugged into with my external drive!

by bizzo

Just curious as to why the deleted files will be returning. Are they the exact same files coming back, or just similar ones?

Just thinking that if you've copied hundreds of files to your desktop, not all of them will be displayed on the screen, so deleting the visible ones, may leave the ones that are out of view, and rebooting will reorder the files on your desktop, showing previously out of view files.

Open explorer and navigate to your desktop, and try deleting them from there.

by mburtonjac

Thank you!
I went under explorer/Desktop/Clean unused I-cons and permamently deleted them off harddrive. You were right! I had thousands of shortcuts and each time I deleted more filled the space.

Much appreciated,

Mary

by thumbsup2

Sounds as if you didn't actually do a copy/paste, you pasted as shortcuts to the desktop.

Try copying and pasting the actual files themselves to a folder in My Documents (not desktop). Once they have been pasted there, delete them from the external drive. After that is done, you should be able to delete the shortcuts.

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