Quick Help: Restore Show Desktop Icon in Windows Vista
I've received dozens of emails asking how to restore the show desktop icon once you've deleted it, so I have a solution for everybody: I've zipped up a copy of the shortcut, and you can download it here.
To put it back into the Quick Launch folder, open up explorer and then type in the following into the address bar:
shell:Quick Launch
Now just unzip the file and copy it into the folder, and you'll have the show desktop shortcut back (the one with the real icon)
Note that I have no idea if this will work for 64-bit Windows, or if you have Vista installed somewhere other than your C: drive. Please let me know if it doesn't.


Hi - Your tip for restoring "show Desktop icon" is great. It only saves one click but that means 1000s per year and it's easier.
What I did was extract to desktop, then dragged to the tray.
It also has the advantage of returning you to last page visited with one click. Thanks, Wayne
Men,you are a genius ,thanks a lot for you idea!!!!!
it help me a lot,i m having a big problem for unnistall nero 7 from my pc,i have wvista and is a laptop,i had tried everything but…,nothing works..,so if you can help me with this…,thanks one more time.
omg i was looking for this all day, thnx so much!
You're da man.
Great - works like a dream (which is more than can be said for vista)
From an XP fan
Brilliant - I found various other geeky solutions but yours was a dream! Thank you!!
If Windows had archangels , you'd be one of them !!
Please let know Microsoft they are stupid not to make this restore easier!!!
They should be paying you for helping their users !!!
Thanks!
Hey men Thank you very much!!! That's a problem that happens a lot… your are great!!!
ohhhhh..thanks God for you and your zipped copy of that shortcut…you saved me!!
I looked everywhere for this and just kept getting the old icon. Your fix worked perfectly!!! Thanks you!!!
This was the best and the easiest solution on INTERNET. Been struggling with this for weeks now. This should be the first hit in google for "Show Desktop Vista". Thanks so much!
this is what i've been looking for..thank you so much!
Thank you so much, that's brilliant!
You can also try this…
Copy and paste the following lines into a Notepad file.
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
Save the file to your Desktop as Show Desktop.scf
For some reason it dosent work. If you could suggest any other ideas — please help!!
Thanks!
Thanks heaps!!!!!
Thanks alot