Help! My grandson was playing on my Windows computer and now I have no desktop icons at all. None! No files, no programs, no photos! Where did it all go?
Ah kids and their extraordinary ability to break and mess up things you and I think are pretty safe and reliable. I suppose there is a chance that your grandson has seriously broken your Windows system, but odds are much greater that he was just messing around with things and left it in a bad way. The good news is that it’s extremely likely that everything is fine, you’re in good shape, and he didn’t delete anything at all.
One possibility is that he created a new account, logged you out, then logged himself in to your computer, but that’s a lot of work and difficult to accomplish without the administrator’s password. Which you don’t leave on a post-it by the computer, do you? If that’s the case, log out or restart your computer and then log in as yourself. Done. Fixed.
The more likely possibility is that he knows about a setting you can tweak in Windows that hides every single icon on the Desktop. Why this option exists is hard for me to explain, but exist it does, and quite accessible too. Let’s start with a Desktop that has a marked paucity of icons:
Terrifying, isn’t it? 🙁
But right-click on the desktop and notice the option at the very bottom of the “View” context menu:
The menu on the right is what you see when you right click. Choose “View” and a sub-menu pops up. And the bottom choice on that menu is… ta daa! “Show desktop icons”. Crazy, but true.
Select it — and it should always be selected! — and suddenly everything shows up again:
Sheesh. One less heart attack in the exciting world of Windows computing! 🙂
I really would encourage you to learn how to set up separate user accounts for your grandson and other users to ensure that none of your own files and data is touched. You can learn how here: How to Set Up Local User Accounts in Windows.
Hope that helps and please do check out all our other Windows help while you’re on the site.
Hi Dave,
I have a 2008 Sony laptop that came with Vista. Last year I updated to Windows 10 while they were giving free downloads. I have been able to do windows 10 updates. in the past spring I had to download the Windows 10 update assistant to complete the updates..
After that the Windows 10 update downloaded fine. Come Sept 13 2017, I have new updates that will not complete the download. This time the update assistant will not work. After ten days of trying several things from my online searches and downloading and uninstalling updates, I took my laptop to the local computer shop. I will likely pay around $100 for their help.
What steps can I take for future updates to avoid tech fees for this relic. It works fine for me but i don’t want any more expenses.
Oh yes, i have Microsoft 2007 and I want to be able to download their last updates too as this is the last year Microsoft is giving updates to that program. Naturally, they want to sell the new word processing programs.
I plan to try another word processing program if I can find one I like. I used to be proficient in Word perfect and loved it, but checked on their price and it was pretty steep. I have a word perfect office 12 Home edition but never loaded it and with windows 10 it will not install.
Thank you, Dorothy Kantak