Send To Desktop shortcut won't work

Helpline Q&A Directory

My Windows Send To folder contains the icon Desktop as a shortcut but it doesn't work. It used to be possible to right-click a file and select Send To, Desktop as Shortcut and the shortcut appeared. How can I restore this facility?

The usual problem with this feature is that the icon in the Send To folder has been deleted. The icon is simply a zero-length file called Desktop (create shortcut) .DeskLink. The name is unimportant (it's just what appears on the Send To menu). What matters is the extension, .DeskLink. Although it looks like a file type, it's really a kludge. If Windows detects that you are sending a file to something of type .DeskLink it will create a shortcut to it on your desktop.

If this doesn't work, the most likely explanation is that the associated data in the Registry has gone missing. To solve this problem, you'll need to use the Registry Editor to do some fairly hairy hacking. If you aren't confident about this, it might be better to leave things alone. If you are, you should still play safe and start by using ScanReg to take a backup. See tip, Back up the Registry

In Regedit, expand the Hkey_Classes_Root folder and look for a folder named .DeskLink. If it doesn't exist (which may be the cause of the problem), right-click the Hkey_Classes_Root folder and select New, Key. For the name of the new key, enter .DeskLink. Select the new key, then double-click the Default value on the right and enter the data:

CLSID\{9E56BE61-C50F-11CF-9A2C-00A0C90A90CE}

Be sure to get all these data strings exactly right, or it won't work. After closing Regedit and restarting Windows, with luck your Send To shortcut will now work. If it doesn't, something is more seriously amiss and you'll probably find that the only solution is to reinstall Windows.