Solved Desktop icon missing from Navigation, Home and my personal folder

In the navigation pane of the Explorer window I do not have a "Desktop" icon. If I go to Home in Explorer, I don't see a Desktop icon there either. If I open my personal folder I don't see a Desktop folder there either... but if I try to create a new folder named Desktop, I'm told that it already exists.

I have the system set to show hidden files and show protected system files, yet it still does not appear.

I have uninstalled OneDrive, if that makes any difference. There is no longer a OneDrive folder in my personal folder.

How can I get my Desktop icon back?

If you had OneDrive running at one point it does make a difference. There's no nice way to say this but it permanently damages the system folder structure. The only way I could fix it was a complete reinstall and following a very precise method of killing OneDrive immediately.

This thread may help --

Calab said:

In the navigation pane of the Explorer window I do not have a "Desktop" icon. If I go to Home in Explorer, I don't see a Desktop icon there either. If I open my personal folder I don't see a Desktop folder there either... but if I try to create a new folder named Desktop, I'm told that it already exists.

I have the system set to show hidden files and show protected system files, yet it still does not appear.

I have uninstalled OneDrive, if that makes any difference. There is no longer a OneDrive folder in my personal folder.

How can I get my Desktop icon back?

Click to expand...

Can you give us a screen shot?

Hello Calab,

For now, you could see if using option three to restore the Desktop folder may fix it.

You can not just arbitrarily uninstall onedrive. It doesn't work that way if you use a MS account. There is a series of steps to get the folders from onedrive back into your user folder before onedrive can be safely installed. Did you follow them? What about your other personal folders (documents and Pictures) do they show up? (You can try the individual folder procedures in step 1 below but I can not guarantee it will work. If it doesn't you'll have to create a new local user account with administrative privileges, restart, login into new account, go to onedrive on the web, and manually download all your files)

Here is what should have been done to safely get rid of onedrive.

Step 1. You first have to turn off backup folder syncing. This tutorial tells you how and also how to get your files onto your local drive.
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-onedrive-folder-backup-syncing-across-windows-11-devices.4321/

NOTE: ONLY IF FOLDERS DO NOT MOVE TO DEFAULT LOCATION IN STEP 1 ABOVE DO THIS

If this happens, then you could try option three below to restore the default folder location and move your files manually from Onedrive into the folders..

• Move or Restore Default Location of Desktop Folder in Windows 11
• Move or Restore Default Location of Documents Folder in Windows 11 Tutorial
• Move or Restore Default Location of Pictures Folder in Windows 11
• Move or Restore Default Location of Videos Folder in Windows 11

Step 2. Then you have to unlink account & PC from onedrive.
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/unlink-account-and-pc-from-onedrive-in-windows-11.15162/
Once you do this the files you have in onedrive will remain there until you login to Onedrive on the Web and delete them.
Sign in - Microsoft OneDrive

Step 3. You can then either uninstall Onedrive or disable it. I prefer to disable it. Open Task Manager>Startup Apps
Find Onedrive in the list and, right click on it, select disable. This prevents Onedrive from auto-starting.

Step 4. If you want to uninstall it instead use Revo Uninstaller Freeware Portable. Be sure to delete any leftover files and registry entries Revo finds. Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware - Free and Full Download

Usually the items in the Navigation pane between Home and This PC are shortcuts to folders that in a default install of Windows are in C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\. I've had success just creating a new shortcut to one of those folders, also to files I might want in Home or Quick Access.

I just wanted to invite people here to UPVOTE this complaint. I just posted it at the Feedback Hub

glasskuter said:

You can not just arbitrarily uninstall onedrive. It doesn't work that way. There is a series of steps to get the folders from onedrive back into your user folder before onedrive can be safely installed.

Click to expand...

This was a fresh installation of Windows 11, and the first thing I did when I got to the desktop was go to Settings->Apps and uninstall OneDrive.

I found my issue... The desktop folder had gotten renamed while I was moving some of my backed up files to the clean Windows installation.

I think it happened when I was moving folders out of the OneDrive folder.

The folder icon text showed "Desktop from backup", but if I tried to create a Desktop folder I was told that it already existed. I renamed the icon to "Desktop" and I was able to get to it from Home and the Navigation pane.

What happens if you paste 'shell: Desktop' into the run bar (without quotes and without the space between : and D)

If i type it properly i get a smilie!