Hey, Hopefully someone can help with this. Laptop users experience this problem quite often but not regularly. Network consists of Windows 2003 AD with roaming profiles and offline settings enabled. Laptops are with Windows XP Pro SP3 with latest updates applied. When they reconnect and sync with network all their desktop icons disappear. Refreshing desktop does its job but unfortunately all shortcuts are auto arranged. Checked the settings and Auto Arrange is not selected with ‘Align to Grid’ and ‘Show Desktop Icons’ only selected. Also checked registry key in [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop] and "FFlags"=dword:00000225 (Auto Arrange off, Grid on) I found something that can be change in registry to lock the icons on desktop but can’t confirm if this works. In registry hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer add “NoSaveSettings”=dword:1 Also saw a lot of suggestions to check 'Lock Web Items on the desktop', but I'm not sure if this will apply to my case since majority of shortcuts points to exe files and office files. Any suggestions are very welcome. Cheers bialy_rb

Your question was answered in the minasi forum.

Hi, Actually I believe that this problem is fully attributed to sync problem. All laptops (win XP sp3) are set to sync when on logon and logoff. Majority has the same warning message that pause the sync process "Reconnecting to the Network causes a synchronization to occur. In order to begin synchronizing all your files and folders must be closed. Please close all your files and folders and then press OK. Any remaining open folders or files will be forcibly closed by windows." When logoff you can't see any effect of this but when login until this message appear you can see desktop icons arrange as should be. After when you confirm you want proceed with sync after warning message "Reconnecting to the Network..." all icons with offline sign disapear until you hit F5 which couses icons to move to left side of the display. Cheers bialy_rb