Running Windows XP Pro on several computers here. Only *one* of them has this problem:
Everytime I create a desktop icon, the computer adds a second identical icon on the desktop. The second icon can't be deleted. When I try to delete it, I get the error message "Cannot read from the source file or disk."
What gives? Any help appreciated. Thanx.
I recommend downloading and running Reimage. It's a computer repair tool that has been proven to identify and fix many Windows problems with a high level of success.
I've used it in the past to identify and fix everything from blue screens (BSOD's), ActiveX errors, corrupt files and processes, dll/exe/sys errors, recover lost memory, Windows update problems, defragging, malware removal etc.
You can download it direct from this link http://downloadreimage.com/download.php. (This link will automatically start a download of Reimage that you can save to your computer.)
I'm wondering if a simple scan disk won't fix the problem. ScanDisk checks your hard drive for errors and then fixes them.
Read other 3 answersI've created a folder with shortcuts to all my songs; about 3,000 in total.
The problem is that it's created duplicate shortcuts for most songs:
How would I go about deleting the duplicates? The duplicates share the same name, just with ".lnk" at the end.
I've tried using the following AutoHotkey scripts but none of these worked, they ended up deleting every file in the folder.
FileDelete, F:\Music\myshortcuts\*lnk*.*
FileDelete, F:\Music\myshortcuts\*.lnk
FileDelete, F:\Music\myshortcuts\*lnk*
Any suggestions? Thanks.
Desktop shows duplicate shortcuts but they cannot be moved or deleted.
They are superimposed on the valid one. The valid one can be moved off them but they cannot be moved or deleted.
When I right click on desktop and choose "View" and un-check "Show desktop icons" they remain there, all the good ones disappear like they are supposed to.
Right clicking on these invalid shortcuts shows same menu that is found with right click on the desktop.
Thanks
Celeste
Hello and Welcome to SevenForums!
Someone is pulling your leg
Change your wallpaper and see if it gets solved.
Using Windows 8.1... there are (6) Links in the File Explorer Folders Panel...
Desktop
Desktop
Downloads
Music
Pictures
Videos
Both of the Desktop links take me to D:\Documents\Desktop, which is where I moved my Desktop location to.
I was supposed to move the location of the Documents link to D:\Documents but apparently I changed it to D:\Documents\Desktop as well, causing the link name and location problem.
It worked with my previous installation of Windows 8.1 so I must have messed up this time.
The odd part is when I try to restore the default location, they both show it as C:\Users\...\Documents. So I tried to change the location of one to D:\Documents and ended up with the contents of that folder on my Desktop. Took a while to fix but I'm hesitant to make any more blind changes.
Any help?
Welcome to the forum!
This may help to get you back to default: User Folders - Restore Default Location - Windows 7 Help Forums
hello, i don't normally need help with simple things like this but this has got me. In previous versions of Windows, i'd delete a shortcut off the desktop and it'd inform me that i was only deleting the shortcut and not the actual program. When i try on Windows 7 though, it informs me, i'll need admin rights to delete this file, and then gives me the directory /program file/ect. This seems to me that it's going to delete the actual file instead of the shortcut. Am i understanding correctly, and if so, how do i just remove the shortcut?
Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.
I've just double-checked my desktop as the scenario you describe seems a bit strange. If you delete a shortcut you are not removing the program or application, but just the shortcut to it, so I think you're absolutely right to query this behaviour.
I'd be inclined to run a full anti-virus check in Safe Mode to see if anything shows up. Malwarebytes is always a good choice for this.
Hi,
currently we setting up USMT (with Custom XML Files) to migrate existing User Profiles to a new Computer.
Now we have the Problem that if we Migrate the Desktop including all files that all Shortcuts will be migrated too - also the broken ones.
It would be great if there would be a solution to automatically delete the broken Shortcuts (via. CMD or something else...).
It would also be an Option to say that we only migrate *.lnk files that pointing to Word, Excel and some other Applications.
And *.lnk files who point to a Network Drive.
Anybody a idea how we can do that?
Thanks!
Regards,
Patrick
I have just created a new user account and selected a desktop background image. So far, so good.
When one logs on to this new account the desktop contains several "shortcuts" to programs which, I prefer, not be available to this account.
I write "shortcuts" enclosed in quotes because they are not like the shortcuts on my personal account. The latter I can delete at will and only the desktop shortcut is deleted, without having any effect on the target program.
On the new user account, attempting to delete a shortcut requires administrator permission and then advises that the target program will also be deleted. Checking the Properties confirms that the icon is indeed a shortcut, but it doesn't behave like one.
How can these shortcuts be removed from the new user desktop?
Is the new account an Admin account ?
Why are there icons on this new account ?
Who put them there ?
A few days ago, when I added Google Chrome to my taskbar, all of my other icons disappeared. When I replaced them, they all had a (2) after their names and I when I tried to get rid of it by renaming them it said that a shortcut with that name already existed. How can I delete the icons that I can't see?
Hello Nomnomno, and welcome to Seven Forums.
Ths pinned items on the taskbar will be located in this this hidden system folder:
C:\Users\(User-Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
You should be able to remove the duplicates from here. You may need to restart afterwards to apply though.
Hope this helps,
Shawn
I'm trying to get my parents computer back up and running. It's been slow for awhile but now it's almost at a standstill. After some investigation (and not much was needed) I see there are 50+ Internet Explorers, 15+ Add/Remove Programs, Etc. We took it to a computer place and they advised they removed 4,000+ duplicates but the remaining 17,000+ would be largely a "manual removal" so we should just wipe it and reload.
Well, isn't there another way? Plus, what will keep this from just happening all over again. I've got their information backed up (largely) but won't I probably just reinfect it (if an infection is what caused this?)
They claim it happened after Internet Explorer 7 was loaded through an automatic update. If this is accurate or not I don't know - they do their best with computers but their understanding is pretty darned limited! I ran Ad-Aware, Spybot, McAfee Stinger, Windows Defender, Defender Pro and the computer place didn't find any viruses/spyware either???
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanx for your time!
Tereza
//Mod edit: Moved from Windows XP Home and Professional forum to the more appropriate.
to BCFirst do this and post any resultsIn normal mode, run an online antivirus check from at least two and preferably three of the following sitesBitDefenderComputer Associates Online Virus ScanPanda's ActiveScanTrend Micro HousecallWindows Live Safety Center Free Online ScanThis scanner from Trend does not require an Active X to run. 1. Detects and removes malware ( viruses, worms, trojans, etc. ) 2. Detects and removes grayware and spyware 3. Restores damage caused by malware to your system. 4. Notifies about vulnerabilities in installed programs and connected network services. 5. Multi-platform support for: Windows, Linux, Solaris. 6. Easy-to-use with the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.certainly test nr. 6 would give you some informationremoved 4,000+ duplicates but the remaining 17,000+ would be largely a "manual removal" so we should just wipe it and reload. what kind of duplicatesDo you still have the Disk from XP?
Read other 4 answersI have a folder, called "HG", full of various folder shortcuts which I use as a custom toolbar on my taskbar, system is [email protected] (The very purpose of that toolbar is to let me access HG repositories on various folders). Recently, the folder shortcuts started misbehaving: on the context menu, there are duplicated some entries (7-zip and antivirus), and some entries are missing (by Murphy's law, one is the "HG Repository explorer", which is the very reason that toolbar exists).
However, when I open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the same folder, the context menu on these same items works just fine.
(Bizarrely, if I click on the taskbar toolbar and select "Open Folder", the context menu is wrong even from Explorer).
See the image below: on the top is the "Good" menu, on the bottom the "Bad" one. Note that on "bad" one, I have some entries which are appropriate for a regular file, but not for a folder (Edit with Notepad++, 7-zip:Open archive...).
I've done the homework and searched the net and this Forum, and a similar problem is described here:
Duplicate context entries when you right-click a shortcut
The catch is, I do have the IsShortcut entry on the lnkfile key:
Code:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile]
@="Shortcut"
"EditFlags"=dword:00000001
"FriendlyTypeName"="@shell32.dll,-4153"
"IsShortcut"=""
"NeverShowExt"=""
A simila... Read more
Problem solved, the old-fashioned way: removed and re-added the toolbar from the taskbar. Guess we'll never find out...
Read other 2 answersI started out with the two previous posts about macros (post 1, post 2) that move rows into columns, but I'm having a little trouble getting it to work for what I need. First, I'm trying to do a data merge into Word, but in order to get the data merge to work/look the way I want it to, I need the XLS data to be in columns.
I'm attaching an example file that has one worksheet of the sample data (though my "real" data has about 300 rows) and the other worksheet is an example of the outcome I need.
Is there anyway I can do what I need? Exporting into another file or another worksheet within this file would be fine.
Thanks in advance.
Read other 11 answers
at the top right of your post, click on the Edit button. At the top of the page you will see a check box marked Delete. Check it and then click the Delete Now button!
Been using Glary's Utilities 3 to clean things up. When I ran its "Duplicate" cleaner, there were many duplicates with iTunes and my pictures. My problem is that I don't know which to delete and which to keep. Here are screen shots to give you an idea of what the duplicate scan showed (BTW, there are many other areas where there are a mess of duplicates,but to keep things simple-I hope, I've only shown those duplicates that may take up a lot of space:
Flycaster mate cannot see any screenshots? so cannot comment.
Personally I am not that overly keen on add on software like Glary but it's your choice.
Is there a good free program or way of deleting duplicate music files, simply?
Thanks for any help!
Is there a good free program or way of deleting duplicate music files, simply?
Thanks for any help!
right click on the file and choose delete
Read other 4 answersHi, Is there such a program as a free duplicate photo finder out there for download? I have a ton of duplicate photos on my hard drive and need to delete them. Thanks.
I am using WLM in W7 x 64 bit on my desktop. Recently several duplicate contacts have appeared in my contacts list.
I have tried to delete them by right clicking on the duplicate contact, but in every case the 'delete contact' is greyed out.
Can you please help ?
Hello mate now the first that comes to mind is that you run these if you haven't already
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html < if necessary include the /f and /r in the command line as per Option2
if those do not fix the problem then a scan with these - just to eliminate anything untoward that may be lurking
http://www.superantispyware.com/
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
ADW download from bleeping computer delete any rubbish found with the malware scans
(with ADW if you are running Kaspersky it will throw it up as malware just override Kaspersky by ignoring it or disabling it for the duration of the scan)
Hi there,
I told my buddy I wanted to reformat my computer. He went to do that by installing a new Windows 7 64 bit for me, but somehow, I now am operating on the new Windows 7 but my old Windows 7 still exist and is taking up enough space in my hard drive to annoy me
Can someone please let me know how I can delete the old Windows from my hard drive? I'm having to install all the old applications I used to have (Quickbooks, Photoshop etc) and it's eating up the hard drive space due to double applications.
Thanks for the help!
Hello Tony, and welcome to Seven Forums.
Sure thing. The tutorial below can help show you how to delete the Windows.old folder.
Windows.old Folder - Delete
Hope this helps,
Shawn
I think I downloaded a .reg file from internet that created double system folders in my computer but I can't remember. They seem to be an extra music, videos, documents, pictures and downloads folder but I cannot put any files in the folder. Anyone know how to delete them? There's also a strange name in address bar when I open one of the folders. Also, when I click start and then click a folder liek videos folder then nothing happens.
Hello and welcome to TenForums
There is a tutorial that describes how you can delete or restore these folders here:
This PC 'Folders' - Add or Remove in Windows 10
Might be worth trying these methods to see if you can restore them.
I wonder can anyone recommend a free program out there that can find duplicate files, pictures etc on a computer? I found some but I am not sure if they are SpyFree and VirusFree.
Hi mamma,You can try this freeware :http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-M...le-Finder.shtml
Read other 5 answersMy PC was recently updates to WIN 7 and folders from my old XP were imported from backup. Now I have duplicates all over the place. Only my wife and I use this pc. Can anyone help me try and restore some sembelance of order to the folders/files.?
Several of us use Puran Utilities, it has that function. Use caution with any and all downloads to avoid junk!
http://www.puransoftware.com/Puran-Utilities.html
Hi all, sorry if this is not in the right category (it kind of mixes email and applications).
I work IT for a local school and we're moving everyone's email from Rackspace email to Gmail. The way we have everyone copying old emails over is to have them setup both accounts in Apple's Mail 6.5 program (all the teachers have Macbooks) and drag and drop from one account to the other.
Here's my concern, we have several teachers who've wound up with duplicate emails in their new Gmail inboxes. Is there a quick way to get rid of the duplicates without manually having to go through each email. Is there some trick on Gmail or a usable script on Mail 6.5 (all laptops on Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard) that will help out? Or perhaps some third party program or service? Any advice would be great. Thanks.
I want to free up space on my hard drive, so I ran a duplicate files finder.
I have several duplicate copies of (large) driver files. I would think that I only need one. One of the folders with drivers is c:\drivers. I use Windows 7, so I imagine I need that folder. I also have folders with some duplicate drivers: \documents\double driver backup and \dell\drivers.
Do I need those last two?
You should keep the c:\drivers. You can delete the others, but if you need to delete because you are running low on hard drive space you really need to install a larger hard drive. Considering the price of hard drives, now, there is no reason to have to delete, etc, because of drive space.
Read other 4 answersI ran CCleaner and it found lots of duplicate files on my laptop. Should i delete the duplicates?
Hi, That is one of the weak part of Windows - and other software. Each software creates its own folder and it normally uses that folder to run. Windows should be smart enough to store common files in only one spot but it can't work this out ! You can delete them BUT please note them where they are because you may have restore them back for other programs. My suggestion: keep them, few hundred megabytes now are just a piece of cake. Regards.
Read other 5 answersHi so I was changing my password on my hotmail account.( i know old school ) My administrator account windows is linked with my homail account. I changed the password on my mobile device. And when i turn my laptop I wasn't able to login. Therefore
I opened another account with the changed password.
Now whenever I turn on my laptop there's two administrator accounts. I'm not able to delete one of them. Please help
My ie "favorites" bookmarks are endlessly duplicating and cannot be deleted. Is there any way to save my bookmarks and get rid of the copies?
Click start, run, type %userprofile%\Favorites and press enter. See what's going on in there with Windows Explorer.
Read other 13 answersI have rows of data with duplicate cells in each row.
I do not want to delete any rows.
I want to delete only duplicate cells in each row.
There are many ways to delete dups in columns. I do not want to delete rows. I do not want to delete rows if dups appear in the row. I want to delete the dups going across the sheet from left to right, row by row, going down the sheet from top to bottom.
For example, I five rows...
fox, sheep, goat, fox, dog bone, cat, fox, sheep
fox, sheep, goat, fox, dog bone, cat, fox, sheep
fox, sheep, goat, fox, dog bone, cat, fox, sheep
fox, sheep, goat, fox, dog bone, cat, fox, sheep
fox, sheep, goat, fox, dog bone, cat, fox, sheep
I want to delete the duplicate cells in each row. I want to end up with the following...
fox, sheep, goat, dog bone, cat
fox, sheep, goat, dog bone, cat
fox, sheep, goat, dog bone, cat
fox, sheep, goat, dog bone, cat
fox, sheep, goat, dog bone, cat
Just to clarify, if a cell is repeated in a row, one unique cell should be left in the row in which the repeated cell appears. I only want to delete repeated cells in the rows in which the repeated terms appear, leaving only one unique where the repeated cells appear. If the word "cat" appears five times in row 2 and three times in row 3, after the macro is run, the word "cat" should appear once in row 2 and once in row 3.
In some cells, spaces do appear because in some cells, the cells contain a short phrase (dog bone) rather than just... Read more
I reinstalled XP Pro to another directory and now I have two installed. How do I delete the original operating system in the Windows folder. It tells me it is a system folder and will not let me delete it.
Thanks
Donald Spinks
You should be able to delete the folder unless some of your programs are using it.
If you are using a FAT32 file system use a Dos boot disk to access the command prompt and delete the folder from there.
If you are using NTFS then use the recovery console to delete it.
Ok another challenge.. I wish I could do this myself, but I struggle with the code.
Is there a way to have a macro check the line below it, and if it is a duplicate row, delete it
Hi,
I am having trouble deleting shortcuts on a Windows NT machine. It keeps saying it is Access Denied, write protected or marked as read only. I am logged on as Administrator as this PC is on a network. If I try to remove the read-only attribute, it says it cannot change the attributes and gives you a choice to Retry or Cancel but it doesn't matter which one you press it doesn't work.
These programs have been removed from Add/remove programs in control panel, only the shortcuts are left.
Can anyone explain the reason why this is occurring even when I am logged in as Administrator?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jo
verify that the login is associated with admin in the local users.
I have discovered 2 shortcuts that have attached themselves to my GAMES folder on my START window. They are SimCity and Steamark Messiah ,Might and Magic: Single player. They will not delete. If I drag them to the Recycle Bin they just appear again. I have tried to delete them in Safe Mode but they will not. There is no 'properties' on the right click, only options:
Play
Copy
Pin to start Menu
Add to Quick Launch
Customise.......
Hide this game.
I do not know how they have appeared there. Windows Defender, Sybot&D, AdAware state I have no problems and my PC is running normally. I have looked for references in my Registry but cannot find any. There are no programs of these names in my Program Files, so I presume they are for playing on the Internet? Please help.
How can I get rid of these shortcuts. Many thanks.
i accidentally put shortcuts on my7 desktop for all my downloads which is in the hundreds,how can i delete all or at least most without having to take the weeks it would take to delete them one at a time?
If they are overlapping on top of each other I would right click desktop then click Auto Arrange to separate them. Click on any one you wish to delete, then press Control a, to select all. Any you do not want deleted hold down the Control key while clicking on them to deselect. Once you have your selections press the Del key to send to the recycle bin. If there are too many for the recycle bin you may have to hold down Shift while pressing Del to delete them permanently.
Read other 1 answersI am wondering whether anyone knows of a good utility that can search through your address book in Outlook Express 6 and delete duplicate entries?
Many thanks in advance...
Please do not start more than one thread for the same problem.
Closing duplicate.
Please continue here:
http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?t=499901
Is there a program or a way to locate and delete duplicate files? I seem to have a lot of duplicates and my hard disk is getting full.
I have over 50 virtual networking adapters in device manager, I have posted this question in many forums, and still cannot get rid of these pesky unused extra adapters. I know they have been created by using Virtualbox, and by creating many virtual machines and updating virtualbox. Unfortunately, I have tried uninstalling virtualbox and the drivers all remain in devicemanager. DeviceMgmt also does not allow me to uninstall or delete the adapters, (When I do they just stay there, even after rebooting.)
I most likely have to go into the registry and delete them, but they are in so many different places there, I need to know the correct place to delete them.
I have a bet that this is the forum where I will get the answer for this even though I have posted in virtualbox forums, technet, MSDN, superuser, serverfault, and stackoverflow.
Hi try the 2nd post in this link : networking - Unable to uninstall virtualbox network drivers - Super User
Read other 8 answersI am wondering whether anyone knows of a good utility that can search through your address book in Outlook Express 6 and delete duplicate entries?
Many thanks in advance...
Hi jeremywms
Can't speak for any of them, here are a few I found:
http://www.snapfiles.com/downloadfind.php?action=s&st=remove+duplicate+e-mail+accounts
Hello,
I have a hard drive that has all sorts of archives of archives in it. So many, that I think I have duplicates of many files. They are not compressed or anything.
I would like a program to go through the HD and pick out the duplicates and preferrably, automatically delete the oldest one, or prompt me.
Is there a good program out there that does this?
Thanks!
Hello,maybe this will helps you
Auslogics Duplicate File Finder Helps Declutter Your Disks
and you can try something from google search list
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...licate&aqi=g10
Hi All,
I have a few macros in Normal.dot including some which load a new letter with different Headers and Footers for business letters and personal letters.
I have assigned buttons for the macros BUS HOM BEN
When I click "New" in the menu I get a new page using the Normal.dot template showing my Macros.
BUS - HOM - BEN
Now, if I click the button for the "Business Macro" = BUS, I get the correct new letter with Business header, but now it has duplicate Macros as in....
BUS - HOM - BEN - BUS - HOM - BEN
I go to the Customize menu and in the Macro list it shows them duplicated, no surprise there.
How can I delete the excess Macros?
Thanks
I am getting rid of my wifes old iphone and I have transferred all of the pictures and videos from it to this computer. The problem is I think I have tons of duplicates now since I am pretty sure I had transferred them all a while ago. How can I check the computer for duplicate pictures and whats the fastest way to delete the duplicates? They are in different places on the computer but the most recent I put in a folder on the desktop. I would hate to delete a picture since 99% of them are of my daughter from when she was born to now basically.
Hello Nikeman123
I think DoubleKiller - find and remove duplicate files (Big Bang enterprises) is what you're looking for. Small yet effective.
I'm running Windows XP on my laptop and my hard drive is almost full. I have been trying to delete files, but everytime I try to delete a file, a duplicate file is created. How can I delete files permanently without creating duplicate files?
When you right-click the file and select Delete, a copy of the file is made?
I use SkyDrive as my cloud storage and have 5GB of files in it.
But I want it to be IN THE CLOUD and hidden, not accesible to everyone using my laptop and not duplicate copies of the files in my hard disk (actually triplicate copies).
For example, let's say my 3GB music collection. I keep a copy in my hard disk within "My Music", a copy in the cloud in Skydrive, but now I have a third copy in my hard disk within the Skydrive folder, which I didn't want and I wasn't asked about.
Microsoft assumed I want this third copy for some reason and downloaded everything automatically to this Skydrive folder. Great.
So, the first thing I do is uninstalling Skydrive, if I want to upload something I do it via browser, but the folder and copy of my files is still there.
My question is, can I delete those files, my music collection and so on without deleting at the same time the copy in the cloud? I mean, if I delete them here they will be deleted in the cloud too?
Thanks in advance.
Copied this from the skydrive FAQ.
What does the SkyDrive folder do?
When you install the SkyDrive desktop app for Windows, a copy of your SkyDrive is downloaded to your PC and put in theSkyDrive folder. This folder is kept in sync with SkyDrive. If you add, change, or delete a file or folder on SkyDrive.com, the file or folder is added, changed, or deleted in your SkyDrive folder and vice versa.
