# Desktop Missing. No Sound. Search Function Not Working Properly



## mrsmile10 (Jul 26, 2011)

okay at first i thought this was a mild issue :banghead: but apparently not only my desktop is missing, my control panel is missing too. on top of that i'm no longer getting sound from my speaker.

*Specs:*
I'm using a Windows 8 on an SSD. 

*What Happened?*
I tried to remove my portable harddrive safely. Then something went wrong with my Local Drive C it seems. A pop-up message saying, "C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer or on a network. Check to to make sure the disk is properly inserted."

*Symptoms*
1) system32\config\systemprofile\desktop went missing.
2) Can't search a lot of stuff e.g. Control Panel using Window key+F anymore
3) No sound
4) Startup app doesn't start up automatically even when i have it enabled on Task Manager 

*What Have I Tried?*
1) Copied Desktop folder (empty inside) from my user folder and pasted it in C:\Windows\....\systemprofile folder. That didn't help the case that much either because whenever I start login into my user account I wouldn't able to go to desktop by pressing the Windows key or click on the top left of the Start Menu of Windows 8. Only Window key+D would work. Right clicking the bottom left doesn't bring up a list of stuff including "Control Panel" 
2) Automatically repaired but failed
3) Did an sfc/scannow but it said, "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations

now i'm hoping that would be a way to get back my old desktop condition but I have no System Restore created, unfortunately.

Please help  and thanks :blush:


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

Was your SSD drive shown in the list of "safely remove" hardware?
You may have accidentally selected your OS drive during the removal process.
Disconnect the SSD and boot, shut down, then reconnect the SSD, reboot, hopefully it will be shown in the list again.


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## mrsmile10 (Jul 26, 2011)

Panther063 said:


> Was your SSD drive shown in the list of "safely remove" hardware?
> You may have accidentally selected your OS drive during the removal process.
> Disconnect the SSD and boot, shut down, then reconnect the SSD, reboot, hopefully it will be shown in the list again.


no it wasn't. my SSD is connected to one of the internal SATA cable so it doesn't show up in the list of "remove safely" and yeah i already tried unplugging and reconnecting the SSD but it didn't work


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## mrsmile10 (Jul 26, 2011)

UPDATE 1: The sound issue somehow went away on its own. I believe the root of the problem lies with system32. it somehow got deleted while i was safely removing another portable harddrive. is there a way to recover that desktop folder from, say, a cache?


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

There is a Registry hack that will allow all drives to show up in the Safely Remove list, but you would not want to do this with an internal SSD. 
Windows/System32 folder has all the files that make Windows run, it cannot be deleted and have the computer boot. 
What Desktop folder are you speaking of?


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