Cant delete dead icons off Desktop?

FatRakoon · 13 Nov 2008 at 12:06

Silly issue, hopefully an easy fix, but its done it since day 1

Vista64 Ultimate

I have uninstalled some games and the icon is left on the desktop.

If I try to delete it, or even just right click it, Explorer hangs and I get this little message coming up abotu searching for a fix and closing the program, and then explorer restarts but there is never any kind of fix.

I now have 8 icons on the desktop that wont go away because of this.

I have tried reinstalling the games, killing off the icon while the game is there and that works on some, but not all.

I have tried CCleaner and a few others but Im 50-50 on them with Vista

Anyone seen this and know of a cure?

aa6972 · 13 Nov 2008 at 12:12

I used dos prompt and deleted from there before, also used a program called "remove on reboot"

FatRakoon · 13 Nov 2008 at 16:46

Using the dos prompt is a sound idea and in theory, it should work, however a few thigns are stopping me from doing that...

1 - The Dos prompt cannot understand SPACES... I have also tried %20 in case you ask.

2 - I cannot rename or alter in any way the icons from the desktop wthout Explorer hanging.

I could I suppose use a Live Linux CD perhaps, and it does look like I will have to, but why should I need to?

FatRakoon · 13 Nov 2008 at 17:08

OMFG!

Somebody shoot me FFS

I left clicked and dragged the icons to the trash and then emptied the trash.

Worked fine.

Looks away Whistling tum-te-tum

Frapple · 13 Nov 2008 at 18:31

cd to desktop
then dir /x to get short names

yashiro · 13 Nov 2008 at 18:37

"Or use quotes and the spaces are no problem."

Mattus · 14 Nov 2008 at 01:05

FatRakoon said:
1 - The Dos prompt cannot understand SPACES... I have also tried %20 in case you ask.

yashiro said:
"Or use quotes and the spaces are no problem."

You don't need to type full filenames from the command prompt anyway! Just type the first letter or two and press Tab to cycle through all the files in that folder which begin with those letters. Works with folders too.