Restore “Show Desktop” icon in Quick Launch toolbar

Posted by Vic Laurie
June 5, 2009

Here’s another Taskbar tip. A handy area of the Taskbar is the Quick Launch toolbar where icons that you use a lot can be placed. One of these is the “Show Desktop” icon. Judging from how often the problem is mentioned on the Web, disappearance of this icon is a common problem. There are several ways to restore the icon if it goes missing.

For Windows XP, the easiest method may be to take advantage of Microsoft “Guided Help” as described at this Microsoft link.

The same page also describes how you can fix the problem yourself. Open Notepad and enter the following:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

Then save the file to your desktop as “Show desktop.scf” . Make sure Notepad doesn’t tack the extension TXT on the file name. Now drag the new icon to the Quick Launch bar and drop it there.

For Windows Vista, the HowTo Geek has provided a file.

Or you can skip the icon entirely. In either Windows XP or Vista, you can use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + d

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Computer management, Shortcuts, Vista, Windows XP

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