Windows Desktop Folder Showing as a Normal Folder: A Hidden Cause and Fix
If your Desktop Folder in Windows Explorer shows as a normal folder and not with the nice blue icon, try the following. It worked for me and makes sense why it was not showing before.
The issue was not related to missing desktop icons, icon cache corruption, or registry GUIDs.
The Desktop folder was being treated as a generic folder by Windows Explorer because it was missing a critical metadata entry.
The fix was a one‑line change in desktop.ini. In my case, I was missing the FolderType entry. That fixed my issue.
Open Command Prompt with elevated permissions (run as administrator) and run the following commands:
# Change path to your user profile Desktop
cd "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop"
# Change the file attributes so can be visible and editable
attrib -h -s "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\desktop.ini"
# Edit the file in notepad
notepad "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\desktop.ini"
# Make sure the below is present in the file. If you have more lines inside make sure that FolderType and IconResource lines are preset
[.ShellClassInfo]
FolderType=Desktop
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-183
# Restore the folder and file attributes
attrib +h +s "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\desktop.ini"
attrib +s "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop"
# Restart Windows Explorer and done
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe