Classic Shell: Forum

Another new guy... Yesterday I was working on this computer and somehow I did something that caused all of the files, folders & shortcuts that were on my classic desktop to disappear. This is a new computer (less than a week old) and I hadn't figured out how to disable the touchpad yet. Somehow, I apparently touched the touchpad and another key or keys and caused everything on my desktop to disappear. I'm running win 8.1 and still getting used to the new computer, but I've been using Win 8 and Classic Shell for well over a year with no other problems. Does anyone have an idea where the things on my desktop went? I still have the desktop, the start orb, the taskbar and I can see my hard drives and the files and folders in the my windows desktop folder. The Start menu still pops up so I can still see access my hard drives, the control panel, network connections, etc. and can run my programs, can switch users, logoff, shut down, restart, etc. My personalized desktop is still the same as it was but all of the icons for everything that I put on the desktop are missing. Any idea what I did and where I should start to look in order to get things back to the way they were? The computer works fine. Thanks in advance for the help.

Try this - right-click on the desktop, select View, then Show desktop icons.