I had a few customers call up about icons on their desktop disappearing. At first i just thought it was some one playing a game. Then i found out that in fact it was real. After looking at the issue over 3 different pc’s with the same problem i found it was only network short cuts that were disappearing. I little git of googling found that is it infact the microsoft system maintenance tool thats being “nice” and cleaning up broken icons. Now none of the links were broken on our customers pc’s so i’m not sure why this keeps happening. But her is how you turn it off.
Disable the System Maintenance troubleshooter
If you must have more than four broken shortcuts on your desktop, you can disable the System Maintenance troubleshooter.
Note If you disable the System Maintenance troubleshooter, all the maintenance tasks that it performs are disabled. Therefore, we recommend that you use Method 1.
To disable the System Maintenance troubleshooter, follow these steps:
- Click Start
, and then click Control Panel.
- Under System and Security, click Find and fix problems.
Note: If System and Security is not displayed you will need to change how you are viewing Control Panel. To change your view, click the down arrow in View by and select Category. View by is located in the top right corner of the Control Panel. - On the left navigation pane, click Change settings.
- Set Computer Maintenance to Off.
source http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978980
