You should be able to recover the icons by rebuilding the desktop by holding down the Command and Option keys at startup. You will see a dialog box asking if you want to rebuild the desktop, select yes and it will preform the operation and continue the boot process.
If this doesn't fix the problem, delete the invisible Desktop DB and Desktop DF files from the hard drive. The easiest way to do this is to use a disk utility program to make these files visible, then drag them to the trash.
Article Change History:
11 Nov 1994 - Reviewed for technical accuracy.
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