I accidentally extracted a humongous folder to my desktop without its own file

[Phantomized]

There are so many different shortcuts and icons- literally infinite. My desktop lags, when I go to delete its to slow to load and I really can't do much on my operating system- able to do other tasks like use programs etc. Is there a way I can remove all of the newer icons? If I must delete them all to fix it I wouldn't mind too much. - Preferably not. Thank you !

Operating system: windows 10

 

[Solandri]

Open up a file explorer and go to:

C:\Users\yourname\Desktop

That'll present a folder with all the contents of your desktop. You can sort, search, etc. to help you select which files to delete or move back to their old location.

Or if you still have the original zip or rar file and don't care about preserving the stuff that was extracted onto your desktop, you can just do a system restore.

 

[nukemaster]

If they are shortcuts you may be able to use the command prompt to remove them.

Shortcut files are .lnk files so

Open the command pormpt
cd\ (this brings you to your root)
cd users
cd "your name"(quotes if it has a space)
cd desktop
del *.lnk

Make sure you are in the right folder

This will remove ALL shortcuts from the desktop

 

[TJ Hooker]

Browse to C:\Users\yourname\Desktop
Sort by date created (or maybe date modified)
Shift-select all files starting from most recent, down until you see something that was already on your desktop prior to extracting.
Delete selected files.

 

[Phantomized]

I feel really stupid now bahaha. I can't believe I didn't think of going into my C:\Users\yourname\Desktop. And I say I'm familiar with computers. *facedesk* Thank you ever so much!