desktop icons sometimes do not display

[qajaq]

I've been using Kubuntu 12.04 for a little over a year, now. I have numerous icons for software on the panel, and I have soft-links to four data files included in my ~/Desktop folder. More often than not, icons representing these file-links show up on my desktop, and I can open the data files with a simple click.

Sometimes, though, the icons do not appear after a fresh re-boot.

Doesn't seem to matter if I shut down in the evening and re-boot in the morning, or if I shut down sometime during the day and re-boot a few seconds later -- the misfire occurs maybe 10-20% of the time regardless of the interval between shut-down and re-boot.

Any ideas where I might look for causes and solutions for this problem?

[Erik1984]

Do you have those icons directly on the desktop or in the desktop folder plasmoid/widget? Maybe the desktop is sometimes in the wrong mode after booting. As you probably know you can set the desktop to display the ~/Desktop folder directly or have it in widget mode (that's the default AFAIK).

[qajaq]

Euroman, I have the icons directly on the desktop. One of the first things I did when I installed 12.04 a year ago was to shut down the plasmoid/widget and I've never used it since. I don't see any advantage to it.

I'm not aware that I made any specific setting to display the ~/Desktop folder directly, other than closing that widget.

[Erik1984]

Just to be sure, have you set the layout to folder view?

http://i.imgur.com/CnzCvvms.png (http://imgur.com/CnzCvvm)

[qajaq]

Yes. I just checked and it was already set to "Folder View."

[Erik1984]

Is it still set to Folder View when the icons disappear?

[qajaq]

Good question. I'll have to wait until the phenomenon happens again to check on that.

[qajaq]

Re-booted yesterday afternoon and the desktop icons were not there. Checked the desktop properties and the display was still set to "Folder View."