Sometimes you might accidentally delete the Show Desktop icon on the quick launch toolbar.

It’s fairly easy to restore it.

My preferred method is to just copy the icon from computer to computer, but there’s another way, too. Also, mind that the Show Desktop icon is not an ordinary program shortcut — but if the icon is deleted, you can re-create it easily, by following these steps (info copied from Microsoft kb #190355):

1. Open Notepad

2. Type the following text on individual lines:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

3. On the File menu in Notepad, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf.

Note: You may put the filename Show Desktop.scf in quotes, like this:

"Show Desktop.scf"

…when saving the file, because otherwise Notepad might automatically append a .txt extension to the file name. Remove this extension if present.

After you save the file, check the location for where you’ve saved the file, and lo and behold! here it’ll be, a new shiny Show Desktop icon :-)

The funny thing is, after you create this small file, using Notepad, Windows will automatically convert it to a Show Desktop icon, and the file will be associated with the corresponding icon automatically!

After you have made the icon, simply drag-and-drop or copy it to the Quick Launch bar. That’s it, you’re done! :-)

PS If you’re using Windows XP (any version), you may simply download the icon from here (79 bytes original Windows XP Show Desktop icon, copied from a Windows XP Professional installation; right-click link and select ‘Save link as…’ or ‘Save target as…’ in your browser).