The Taskbar Phantoms

Here’s a mystery for you! (Or for ME, at least.) I recently found that several of the items that appear on my Taskbar don’t seem to be in the system at all. The Taskbar icons work when I click them; but those items aren’t in the Taskbar folder, or the QuickLaunch folder, or ANY folder. I don’t see how an object (i.e. a folder, file, or program) can be in my computer without being in any folder. And yet, apparently, they are.

These items include:

1. YouTube;
2. Wikipedia;
3. AOL Mail;
4. Weather (Not the Weather app that comes with Windows, but a link to the National Weather Service website, “Weather.gov”);
5. VitalSource Bookshelf (An E–book reader which I purchased and installed).

I've searched the whole "C:" Drive, with the "View Hidden Items" option enabled, and found no trace of these items -- except for the VitalSource Bookshelf, which is in a folder called

"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\AppRepository"

And when I tried to open that folder, I got "Access Denied". I'm an Administrator, and the only user on the computer.

These items also appear in the Start menu -- but not in either of the two "StartMenu" folders. So they're both "Start Menu Phantoms" and "Taskbar Phantoms"!

Could it be that Windows now has folders that don't appear even when you show "Hidden Items"? So far, I haven't thought of any other explanation.

After looking through all the other items in the Start Menu, I’ve now found that some of them, too, don’t seem to reside in any folders that I can find. These include: Photos, Paint, Solitaire, Media Player, Restart, Shut Down, Recycle Bin, and Control Panel.

did you install them as web apps? like Start > All Apps > Chrome Apps (or Edge Apps or Brave Apps, etc)

in your browser, go to

chrome://apps
edge://apps
brave://apps

I'd love to see a picture of all those things on the taskbar!

On any questionable icon: rt click, hover over the icon's name, rt click on it and click on properties.

"On any questionable icon: rt click, hover over the icon's name, rt click on it and click on properties."

Eh, none on mine have Right Click option > Properties.

To see the proerties for my taskbar icon WhatsApp, I have to right-click on it and then right-click on WhatsApp just above 'unpin from taskbar'.

Based on the directory listing, that “Repository” folder contains the names of some apps, including Photos, Paint, Solitaire, and Control Panel. But it doesn’t seem to contain any actual programs (“exe” files).

I did find Notepad, Paint, and Media Player, in the folder
“AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps”.

And I’ve found two other copies of the Notepad program:
One in C:\Windows, and one in C:\Windows\System32.

The thing that bothers me is that (supposedly) every program is supposed to be in either the "C:\Program Files" folder, or the "C:\Program Files (x86)" folder. And yet, apparently, it isn't so!

Not really, many apps allow you to choose the destination folder.