f it seems like the desktop shortcuts on your Windows 7 keep disappearing, you’re not hallucinating. Windows 7 automatically deletes broken and network shortcuts if there are too many. Here’s how to stop Windows from throwing these (often still useful) shortcuts away.If you have four or more “broken” desktop shortcuts (which includes shortcuts to disconnected network locations and shell folders), System Maintenance in Windows 7 will delete the shortcuts in its weekly maintenance. While Microsoft suggests keeping the number of these type of desktop shortcuts to four or less, or as an alternative, turning off System Maintenance altogether, it may not always be practical to do so.

Technology blog gHacks demonstrates how to fix the problem with a script that lets you take ownership quickly. Make sure to back up all important files before doing something like this.After installing the script, users should right-click and take ownership of C:\Windows\diagnostics\scheduled\Maintenance\TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1. After that, the user must run Command Prompt:

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
}
}

As always, proceed at your own risk when tackling these sorts of low-level system tweaks, but if this is an annoyance you’ve been dealing with, it might be worth a try. In addition, a similar procedure can prevent Windows from cleaning up unused desktop shortcuts, but after this tweak Windows should no longer delete these “broken” shortcuts

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Reader Sweetshop Union’s Windows 7 desktop has been completely transformed with the Gaia09 skin for Rainmeter, complete with widgets, wallpaper, and a visual style to match.

The desktop is a combination of:

• Rainmeter with the Gaia09 theme.
• Rocketdock
• Gaia09 Visual style for Windows 7 (includes wallpaper)
• Full instructions for installing Gaia09 Rainmeter skins can be found here.

This desktop not your style? Why waste time complaining? Instead, get started creating your own killer desktop with the easy-install Rainmeter 1.1 package and show the world what you can do. If you get stuck and need some help, join up with the Lifehacker Desktop Customization Google Group to collaborate on new ideas for desktop configurations.

Once you’ve created your own beautifully tweaked (and hopefully productive) desktop, post it over in the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group complete with a description of the programs and tweaks you used (and preferably links as well!), and we just might feature it here.

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Windows 7 only: If you’re not into Windows desktop gadgets, there is another way to easily monitor your computer’s CPU and RAM: Taskbar Meters puts simple, attractive resource monitors right on your Windows 7 Taskbar.

Taskbar Meters contains two programs that you can pin to your taskbar—one that monitors CPU, one that monitors RAM. Each has a colored bar that shows how much of that resource you are using, complete with color coding. In the program’s preferences, you can decide how often to update the meter and what percentage of usage constitutes “yellow” and “red” colors on the taskbar. Each icon also has a jumplist that lets you easily open up Task Manager or Resource Monitor to get a more detailed report.

Taskbar Meters is a free download, Windows 7 only.

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Windows only: Desktop sidebar LongBar hosts mini-applications as “tiles”, giving you application launchers, system stats, Facebook updates, sticky notes, and more on the side of your screen.

Once you’ve installed and launched LongBar, you can use the tiny arrow at the top of the bar to access the settings menu, where you can move the sidebar to the right-hand side of the screen, and change between a couple of available skins. Unlike most sidebars, this one doesn’t come bundled with any widgets—you’ll have to choose between the 30+ widgets on their website, drag them over to the sidebar to install them, and then configure them with the context menu. LongBar is free and open source, the latest version works on Windows 7 or Vista only, requires the .NET framework 3.0.

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it was a rather annoying issue.

I’ve experienced a similar situation with Microsoft Office Product

and usually the reinstallation of a service pack would solve the problem. However, this problem wasn’t related to an Office product but rather a product called Its Deductible from Intuit, the makers of Quicken, Quickbooks, and Turbotax.

Since there wasn’t any CD or disk that contained this .msi file, we were left with fixing the windows registry to correct this annoying issue.

First, I downloaded CCleaner and ran a registry scan that helped clean up nearly 657 separate issues. However, this step didn’t solve the problem with the Windows Installer popup. So, I downloaded the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and installed it on the computer.

After running the Windows Installer Cleanup and removing the installation info for Turbotax and ItsDeductible, I rebooted the computer. After returning to the Windows Desktop, I tried opening the several programs that would not open correctly before. Each program opened without any problems. Problem solved.

If you experience an issue with a program trying to install a .msi file that is missing, the issue is most likely a corrupted Windows Installer issue. Click on the following link to download the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and fix it.

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