The elephant in the room that no one’s talking about-shortcuts don’t work

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Desktop Shortcuts only work on one side of Desktop.

Please help. I’ve researched, googled and tried everything I know to find the answer to this problem. It started a couple weeks ago and is not related to any recent Windows updates that I know of. Oh, and I even tried copilot! One of the solutions from copilot was to Repair Windows Apps via PowerShell. That worked temporarily, but after one day it went back to the same problem.
The shortcuts on my desktop on 2/3 of the monitor on the right side do not work. I can’t double click, move them, open them or right click on the right side of the desktop to refresh. The only way I can make them work again is to reboot my computer. I have tried various solutions posted by Microsoft (evidently it’s a known issue), but none of their solutions have worked so far.

Please, if any of you have different answers, please reply and post here! Thank you in advance!

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Do you have any team communication apps installed, like Slack or Cisco Webex?

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b, I do not have Cisco or Slack installed, but I do have Zoom and Asana installed. I do not use the team features on either one of them, though.

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A program like that could be creating an invisible window above the right of your desktop, so it may be worth closing programs you’re not actively using; one at a time to see if you can make an invisible window go away.

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b,

You may be onto something here. I just checked and once again my shortcuts were froze. I did “ALT-Tab” and checked all my windows….clicked on the desktop window and then clicked on copilot and the shortcuts started working again. I’m just wondering if it has something to do with the Copilot app. I am going to disable it and see if my shortcuts will stay active. I appreciate your help and feedback. I believe this will resolve it and will keep investigating the “windows”. Thanks again.

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b

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No. I don’t have that installed.

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Not a solution nor an answer, but a couple of workarounds to be able to use them. Maybe.
Both of these involve getting into Explorer, at least initially.

1 – Longer way for usage. You’ll do this each time you use a shortcut.
In Explorer, navigate to C:\Users\your-name\Desktop
Make sure that you — View > Details
On the column heading line, click on Type. This sorts the entries.
Scroll down to the Internet Shortcut you wish to use.

2 – On your Desktop, in the portion where everything works, create a folder named (perhaps) ‘Shortcuts’.
As in (1, above), navigate to your Desktop folder. Sort by Type.
Select (hold down ‘Ctrl’ key, and left-click on) each shortcut you need to use.
Release Ctrl. Right-click on any of the selected (blue colored) items; while continuing to hold the right click, drag the cursor to the new ‘Shortcuts’ folder. Release the mouse.
You have a choice of Copy, or Move. (Left)-click on Copy.
(This leaves the ‘original’ shortcuts in situ – for when the bug is fixed.)

Now, on the [real] Desktop, you can click on the ‘Shortcuts’ folder, and then click on the desired shortcut. A bit clumsy, but at least the shortcuts work.

Caveat: This works on Windows 7; I don’t have Windows 11, so can’t verify.

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LadyCritique

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PaulK,

Thanks for this suggestion, if I don’t find the invisible window that “b” was referring to, I will try this workaround.

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