If you add the default Desktop toolbar, you get a seemingly random list of all shortcuts and files that are currently on the desktop. There is furthermore no sorting option available, which can be a problem if you have many items on the desktop as you need to look through all of the listing to find the file or shortcut you are looking for.

There is however an option to sort the desktop toolbar listing by name. This is done the following way:

Right-click on a blank spot on the taskbar and select Toolbars > New Toolbar from the menu. You now need to select the desktop folder in your user profile folder, and not the special folder desktop. You find that folder under C:\Users\username\Desktop. Pick that folder and it should appear on the Windows taskbar.

All that is left to do now is to left-click on the arrow next to the desktop listing to bring up the file listing. You will notice that it appears unsorted.

Right-click any file listed there and select Sort by name from the context menu to sort the file listing alphabetically. Alphabetical access should speed up the recognition and execution of particular shortcuts and files stored on the Windows desktop.

I have tested this method under Windows 7 where it worked fine. It is likely that it will work under Windows Vista and maybe even Windows XP. Please let me know if you have tested it under those operating systems so that I can update the guide accordingly.

Have you activated the desktop toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter, on your Microsoft Windows system?

This shortcut is actually the Location Context Menu in the Nautilus Actions tool. Thanks to that little feature you can create plenty of quick-access shortcuts which will start up those applications from the right-click menu. Let’s see how this is done.

Nautilus Actions Configuration

I have covered this topic before (see Nautilus Actions content on Ghacks) on Ghacks, so the idea of creating a Nautilus Action should be familiar. In case you haven’t read any of the other content, the idea behind Nautilus Actions is that you can create an action, based on location and/or MIME type. These actions are highly customizable and incredibly handy to use.

Usually these actions are created not only with the command to be executed, but with command parameters that are used to inform the command what it is acting on (for example: %M for space-separated list of full pathnames for selected files). We are going to NOT add parameters for any actions we create for the purpose of command shortcuts. Why? Because for the shortcut you are not going to be acting on any file or directory, it is just to start an application.

Create the action

Click on System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions Configuration. This will start up the Nautilus Actions Configuration window. Let’s say you want to create a short cut used to open the GNOME Terminal application. Here are the steps you need to use to do that:

1. Click the “Define a new action” button.
2. In the Action tab make sure you check the box for “Display item in location context menu” and enter “GNOME Terminal” in the Context Label area.
3. In the Command tab enter /usr/bin/gnome-terminal for the Command Path. Do not enter anything for the Parameters.
4. Click the Save button.

Your action has been created. Now, to make sure it will appear, you need to restart Nautilus. To do this you can either log out and log back in or you can open up a terminal window and issue the command nautilus -q.

Figure 1

After Nautilus has restarted right-click anywhere on your desktop and you should see an entry in your menu that looks like that shown in Figure 1.

Of course you can do this with just about any application you want. But know that this really wasn’t the intended use of this tool…but it is a handy way to create those shortcuts.

You could get very creative with this set up and create shortcuts for various commands and actions.

Final thoughts

One of the aspects of the Enlightenment desktop that I’ve always like was the ability to quickly access applications from a simple click of the mouse anywhere on the desktop. This little “shortcut” on GNOME will give you a similar feature.

Desktop Tray Launcher offers a in many cases better solution. The program basically scans the computer desktop on start and adds all shortcuts and files to a list. This list is then made available by clicking on its icon in the Windows system tray.

A very ingenious and comfortable way of loading files and opening programs on the desktop.

Simply right-click the program icon in the system tray to display a list of all shortcuts and files on the desktop. A left-click on any item in the list will open it right away.

What makes this even more interesting is the fact that it is possible to hide the desktop items without interfering with the program’s functionality. Users basically get a clean desktop and still the option to launch the desktop shortcuts easily.

Desktop Tray Launcher will work with all recent versions of the Microsoft operating system, including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 4.0, which needs to be installed on the system.

Pay a visit to the developer’s website if you want to download Desktop Tray Launcher.

It will first remove desktop shortcuts that have not been used for at least three months. System Maintenance will also remove broken shortcuts on the desktop if there are more than four of them. The problem with the latter is that Windows 7 will recognize shortcuts to disconnected network locations as broken and also shortcuts that link to shell folders.

Microsoft offers two solutions to the problem. The first advice is to keep the number of broken shortcuts below four. This is not always possible due to the problems with broken shortcuts mentioned above.

The second suggestion by Microsoft is to turn off Computer Maintenance:

• 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.

This does however turn off all other computer maintenance related tasks like checking the system time, disk volume errors or the disk space error reports.

All the maintenance tasks are powered by scripts that are located in c:\windows\Diagnostics\Scheduled\Maintenance\. Options are to edit the scripts directly in that directory. The permissions prohibit that the files are edited by the current user.

Fixing Windows 7 Desktop Shortcuts Disappearing

Please note: This is a hack which might have consequences on other parts of the operating system. Everything worked fine afterwards on the test system but make sure to backup the files properly before editing them

First we need to take control of the files so that we can edit them. To do that you need to take ownership first and then modify the access rights of the current user so that the files can be modified.

The first part can be automated. Just download the script at this forum and execute it. This should add a Take Ownership entry to the right-click menu in Windows Explorer.

Go to C:\Windows\diagnostics\scheduled\Maintenance in Windows Explorer after installing the script and right-click the file TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1. Select the Take Ownership option which should transfer ownership to the logged in user.

The user still does not have permissions to save the file which means that we have to complete the next step as well before we can edit the broken shortcuts Powerscript file so that it will not delete broken shortcuts automatically.

Open an elevated command line prompt. You do that by clicking on the Start orb, All Programs, then Accessories. Right-click the Command Prompt link and select to Run As Administrator.

Now issue the following command to grant the active user full rights of the file. Make sure you replace USERNAME with the name of the active user.

icacls c:\windows\diagnostics\scheduled\maintenance\TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 /grant USERNAME:F

Now you can edit the file normally in a text editor like Notepad. Open it and locate the line (line 11)

[string]$list = ""

Delete everything below that is below that line up to (line 22)

return $list

The lines that are deleted are:

Get-ChildItem -Path $path -filter *.lnk | Foreach-Object {
$fullPath = ConvertTo-WQLPath $_.FullName
$wmiLinkFile = Get-WmiObject -query "SELECT Name,Target,AccessMask FROM Win32_ShortcutFile WHERE Name = '$fullPath'"

if(-not(Test-ValidLink $wmiLinkFile) -and (Test-Delete $wmiLinkFile))
{
$list = AttachTo-List $list $wmiLinkFile.Name
}
}

This basically returns a blank list to the script so that no shortcuts get deleted. I have tested it with five broken shortcuts and they have not been deleted after running system maintenance.

That fixed the broken shortcuts but we still have the issue that shortcuts that have not been used for some time are deleted by Windows 7 as well.

We have to (almost) perform the same operation here. Locate the file TS_UnusedDesktopIcons.ps1 in the same directory. Take ownership of it and grant the active user access rights.

Edit the file afterwards and locate the line (24)

[string]$list = ""

Delete everything up to line (35)

return $list

so that the following lines get deleted

Get-ChildItem -Path $path -filter *.lnk | Foreach-Object {
$fullPath = ConvertTo-WQLPath $_.FullName
$wmiLinkFile = Get-WmiObject -query "SELECT Name,Target,AccessMask FROM Win32_ShortcutFile WHERE Name = '$fullPath'"
$lastAccessTime = Get-LastAccessTime $_.FullName

if((Test-ValidLink $wmiLinkFile) -and (Test-Delete $wmiLinkFile) -and (Test-FileShortcut $wmiLinkFile) -and (Test-Unused $lastAccessTime $threshold))
{
$list = AttachTo-List $list $wmiLinkFile.Name
}
}

Please note that I did not test the second script but it should work just as fine.

This should resolve all issues that users have with removed shortcuts on the Windows 7 desktop.

Make sure you backup the files properly before you edit them. Please let me know if this worked for you or if you have a better idea on how to fix the deleted shortcut problem in Windows 7.

While that alone would not be really spectacular Fences comes with one of the easiest ways to hide all or specific fences. Hiding and unhiding the fences can be done by a simple double-click on the desktop. This means that you can work with a icon free desktop for most of the day. If you need any shortcuts you simply double-click the desktop, the fences containing the icons appear and you can launch them normally.

Fences does come with the possibility to exclude areas from being hidden by the double-click which is great if you need some shortcuts visible all the time.

The program offers the ability to group all icons on the computer system automatically after installation. The alternative would be to create empty fences and move the shortcuts in those fences manually.

A new fence can be easily created by right-clicking on the computer desktop and drawing a rectangle on the screen. New icons places on the computer desktop will not automatically be moved into fences. It is up to the user to perform that operation.

Another interesting feature of the software program is that it will automatically scale if the screen resolution changes. Fences can be downloaded at the Stardock website. The software is compatible with the 32-bit editions of Windows XP as well as both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.