If you want to quickly launch your favorite Steam games, you can create a desktop shortcut on your Windows 10 computer. Then, all you need to do is double-click on the shortcut, and voila, you’re ready to play the game. When you lose interest in that game, you can simply delete the game shortcut.
Well, things are not always that easy. Sometimes, your computer fails to delete the game shortcuts and they re-appear next time you restart the machine. Here’s a list of potential solutions to help you fix the issue.
How do you delete Steam game shortcuts that won’t delete?
Use Disk Cleanup
Right-click on the problematic game shortcut and select Delete. But before you shutdown or restart your computer, run the Disk Cleanup tool.
- Type Disk Cleanup in the Windows search bar and press the Enter key.
- Then select the drive where you installed your Steam games. Hit OK.
- In the new Disk Cleanup window, remove all the files from the list, including temporary files.
- Restart your computer and check if the game shortcut is still there.
Delete the shortcut in Safe mode
Check if you can delete the problematic game shortcuts in Safe mode. Maybe some of the programs running in the background are interfering with Steam. For step-by-step instructions on how to boot into Safe mode, go to Microsoft’s support page.
Check your disk for errors
If your system files got corrupted, that could explain why those stubborn shortcuts won’t disappear. Also, if that game no longer exists on your drive (for example, you first uninstalled the game and then removed the shortcut), you need to run Check Disk to remove the entry.
Go to This PC, right-click on the drive where you installed Steam and select Properties. Click on the Tools tab and check your disk for errors.
Additionally, launch Command Prompt with admin privileges and run the following commands one by one:
- sfc /scannow
- DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
- DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
- DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
Restart Windows Explorer
- Delete the game shortcut again.
- Right-click on the taskbar and select the Task Manager.
- Right-click on Windows Explorer and select Restart.
In this manner, you’ll force Windows Explorer to update its database.
Delete the shortcut from OneDrive
Some gamers solved this issue after deleting the shortcuts from OneDrive first. It turned out the shortcuts were synced to OneDrive so users could not delete them without first removing them from the cloud storage service.
Contact Steam Support
If nothing’s working, contact Steam Support and ask them to help you to permanently delete the desktop shortcuts of their games.
Can you think of other methods to troubleshoot this issue? Let us know in the comments below.