Method 2: Enabling the Desktop icons Visibility. So, mark it as checked by clicking over it. If you have a SSD you won't have fragmentation. Inside the View tab, check for the Show desktop icons at the bottom. Just make sure to do this last if you have a HD vs a SSD. I like Drive Genius, there are others but I've found this is one of the better ones. But before you do this make sure you have a good backup! Lastly, you may want to defrag your HD as the table maybe badly fragmented. This icon may appear either on your Mac's lock/login screen or while you are using your Mac.
You may need to run it though a few times to get all of the errors fixed and you still may need to boot up under single user for the desktop to get rebuilt as well. You may see a binoculars icon while you are using your Mac. I would strongly recommend you boot up under an external disk and run Disk Utility to fix both the permissions and the drive. Often when I see this when nothing has been altered the HD's Btree tables need repair. Then, it was like a ghost was in the machine, because while I couldnt see the files in the finder or using the terminal (ls -a), the files werent completely gone, because after Id delete the Desktop DF and Desktop DB files they would reappear, but as soon as I tried to create a file on the desktop everything would disappear, both from the. The other option here is to locate the files and just make new shortcuts. If you can't fix the pathing, you'll need to use the Select New Original button to relocate the file. If you see the error you may find fixing the Folder or Volume path easier than fixing all of the discrete shortcuts.
Learn how to do that by opening the terminal and entering the hide command.Dont forget to check. Right click the icon and then select Get Info Within the general section note the Original entry see if you can figure out what changed. You might want to hide certain files on your desktop on Mac. To fix this you will need to open each shortcut and relink the original file. This could be caused by moving or renaming the folder or the volume the original file was located. It appears your shortcuts have lost there linkage back to the original files which is why you are seeing the generic icon vs the discrete icon the app or document would normally have.