Web Talk

After playing with Windows 7 options and features you might face the annoying issue that all of your shortcuts (or just some of them) have disappeared from your computer desktop. No fear! That’s quite normal. In fact, Windows 7  deletes all those shortcuts which may be corrupted, deleted or broken. The System Maintenance Troubleshooter on its own accordance and following its own schedule, performs a weekly maintenance of the whole operating system to fix  errors, things which have gone “wrong” and eventually reports problems through Action Center. 

When the System Maintenance Troubleshooter finds out that there are more than 4 shortcuts broken on your desktop, it automatically deletes them. If you do not like this behavior, you can decide to disable and turn on the System Maintenance Troubleshooter. Here is how.

1. Click Start.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Click System and Security.
4. Click Find and fix Problems.
5. On the left pane, click Change Settings.
6. Now, set System maintenance Troubleshooter Off.

[via: KB978980]