Comments on: Restore Missing or Disappeared IE (Internet Explorer) Desktop Icon in Windows XP SP3

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:36:23 +0000

Want to fix this automatically? See knowledge base article 945402 and click Fix It!

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:35:40 +0000

Want to fix this automatically? See knowledge base article 945402 and click Fix It!

By: ie8user

ie8user — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:01:36 +0000

Microsoft has released a “Fix it” in KB945402 that will do this for you automatically on both WinXP and Vista.

By: mohsen

mohsen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:18:05 +0000

many thanks. its usefull and solved my poroblem. thanks

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:42:57 +0000

I found the first solution worked fine on a machine that had just been upgraded to SP3 – the REG_DWORD entry under NewStartPanel was present and its data value just needed changing to 0. Having got the icon back, I deleted it on purpose (It’s what customers do all the time…). Now I couldn’t get it back at all, trying all of the suggestions above. Even deleting the NewStartPanel key and recreating the entries from a reg file from a working PC did not help. Finally I trawled through the entire registry searching for all occurrences of DWORDs named {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} and ensured all their data values were set to 0. This did the trick. I guess each instance may be slightly different, dependant on how the icon was removed

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:09:25 +0000

I did not mention that although I have my desktop item back, the option to enable it is still missing from the Desktop Items panel within the Display Properties.

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:05:32 +0000

None of these solutions worked for me at first (XPPSP2 and SP3, IE6 and/or IE7) either alone or all together. But, combined with all the solutions mentioned above, I went to HKCR\CLSID\{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}\ShellFolder and changed ‘Attributes’ to ‘0′. (Oddly, in another ‘working’ computer the value was ‘36′ in decimal.)
I did the same at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}\ShellFolder and also at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}\ShellFolder and so far, after a reboot I have gotten the fully functional IE desktop item back on all user accounts. I hope this helps. And thanks to all of you who have also contributed to fixing this annoying problem.

By: paulo alberto

paulo alberto — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:14:35 +0000

Gostaria de ressaltar que

No painel do lado direito, clique duas vezes em (871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-chave 08002B30309D).[ o certo é {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} com { }

If the registry value name does not exist, create a new DWORD value and name it as {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} Se o valor do registro nome não existir, crie um novo valor DWORD e nomeie-a como (871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D)incorreto {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}correto

Essa dica precisa ser atulizada, pois é o valor correto é {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} com {} e não com () como relata no post.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:52:49 +0000

Marc, I tried the fix mentioned in this article and like you said, it didn’t work on my XP. I tried the fix you suggested and it did the job. Many thanks.

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:12:33 +0000

I have found this fix is so many locations it isn’t funny, and it has NEVER worked on XP. It did work on Vista though.

Oddly enough, this fix is also on Microsoft’s website and they state it works in Vista and XP (which id doesn’t).

What DID work, was changing the following registry key’s Attributes value (REG_DWORD) to 0:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D}\ShellFolder\

It was set to 0×00100000 for some reason. This worked on 2 user profiles on the same machine, and the fix at the top of this page did not need to be applied.