This morning I logged on my computer to see that only 12/36 of my shortcuts were displayed, as well as all of my user settings(such as my custom theme, hiding the PC Action Center, my keyboard back-light coloring, and my device drivers) reset/missing and my shortcuts on the action bar being unpinned. I wasted an hour+ trying all these broken shortcut fixes I looked up online(including restarting the explorer.exe, creating a .bat file that would delete the IconCache, booting up in safe mode, and numerous other potential fixes), none of which worked.


I just realized that for some reason, the desktop/account I am being shown is the Public account, not my personal/administrator account. Any time I log in to my personal account, I'm automatically greeted with only the public desktop/folders/etc. Going in my C:\Users\[MyName]\Desktop showed the appropriate programs/shortcuts being right there in the folders though.

Any help in fixing this issue would be greatly appreciated, as I'm simply out of ideas. I'm using Windows 64-bit, and I didn't download/run any system fixes or scans the previous day to trigger this event.


P.S. I didn't post my system specs because I doubt they'd help in this scenario.

Not too long ago I had the .lnk virus which was an old virus embed itself onto my system. I had to do a complete system restore to get anything to load more than once. From what you describe it looks like you have had your system remotely accessed somehow and now you're stuck with what they left you. I was even using Norton Internet and I got zapped. Now in addition to Norton I used Iobit Malware Defender free verson and it traps more stuff than Norton ever did.

Can you manually restore your shortcuts?

I think the only safe thing for you to do is to totally reload your OS. I recently had a virus like you are describing on a customer's computer and the only way I got rid of it was to boot from the Windows 7 install disk then I had to go to the "Advanced" installation to delete C: drive>New Partition>format> install. If you try any other method the virus will survive the format of the drive and reinstall itself even deeper than it was before. You have to delete the drive first and the only way to do it is to boot from the disk and go to "Advanced." You may need to go into your bios and reset the boot order to make the DVD/CD drive the first boot drive. Now days viruses hide a recovery copy and reinstall themselves. The best anti-virus I have found is Vipre Antivirus Premium from www.sunbeltsoftware.com. If I can help you feel free to write me at [email protected]. DrTom4444

Just to provide information, I figured out what the issue was. For some reason, my regular account had been changed to a .bak account in my registry, while my public account was the only non-.bak. To change this, I simply made the public the .bak account while removing the tag from my regular. No clue how it happened, but it fixed my issue.