Troubleshooting

Fixes for the problems that actually come up: missing icons, misplaced boards, freezes, an empty desktop, and startup not sticking.

My desktop is empty and DeskDrawer is not running#

The Native icon layer was hidden and DeskDrawer stopped before it could restore it.

Fix now: right-click the desktop → View → Show desktop icons. If it already shows a check mark, click it twice.

Or wait: the hiding is session-only and is never written to your Windows settings, so your icons return at your next sign-in regardless.

My boards are off-screen or under the taskbar#

Usually after a resolution change, unplugging a monitor, or moving the taskbar.

Tray menu → Fix misplaced boards. It re-places only boards that are genuinely off-screen, covered by the taskbar or overlapping; boards that are fine are left where they are. Contents, names and sizes are never changed. See Layout & monitors.

Icons are grey placeholders, or slow to appear#

Expected briefly on a large or cloud-backed desktop: boards draw first and icons fill in behind them. A Cloud placeholder that is still downloading shows a generic icon and updates when it finishes.

If placeholders persist for a long time, something on the desktop is pointing at a location Windows cannot reach — see the next item.

DeskDrawer freezes, or the mouse wheel stops working#

This specific pair of symptoms almost always means one thing: an item on a board points at a network location that is offline — a disconnected VPN, a sleeping NAS, a mapped drive that is gone.

• Reconnect the network location, or remove that item from your desktop.
• Make sure you are on the current version. Five separate cases of this were fixed across 1.1.4, 1.2.2, 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and 1.2.5; the last removed a stall triggered by deleting a file or hovering the Recycle Bin while a mapped drive was offline. See The same bug, five times: offline network locations.

A shortcut does nothing when I click it#

Its target is gone. Since 1.2.1 Windows' own "Problem with Shortcut — do you want to delete it?" prompt appears, as it does on the real desktop. Earlier versions swallowed it. See Shortcut.

"Run at startup" does not stick#

Check Task Manager → Startup apps. DeskDrawer registers as a proper Windows startup task, so Task Manager can disable it and that disable wins. Re-enable it there or in the tray menu — since 1.2.3 the two agree in both directions. See Run at startup.

A new file did not appear on a board#

New desktop items join the Default board. If it is folded or off-screen you will not see them there. Unfold it, or run Fix misplaced boards.

Win+D hides my windows but not my boards#

That is intended. Boards are the desktop, so showing the desktop shows them. Use the taskbar or Alt+Tab to bring minimized windows back. See Windows integration.

I want to see the plain Windows desktop for a moment#

Tray menu → Switch view. Boards hide, native icons come back, and DeskDrawer keeps running. Switch again to return. See View mode.

Something else#

Send a report. DeskDrawer has no Telemetry, so a problem that is not reported is a problem the developer does not know exists.

Attach error.log from the configuration folder — tray menu → Open the configuration folder. It is plain text, you can read it first, and it makes a fix far more likely. See Support.