In some environments, such as an assembly line or production facility, you may want to present an ultra-clean desktop to your users. By hiding the icons, all that is visible on the desktop is the task bar, and whatever wallpaper you have set as the background.
Or, you could use this to play a prank on a friend. Take a screen shot of the desktop, then hide the icons, then set the screen shot as the wallpaper. Your friend will madly be clicking on “icons” which are really part of the wallpaper!
Pretty simple process – just add the new value to the key specified below:
Key:HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Type: REG_DWORD
Name: NoDesktop
Value: 1
Now, you’ll need to reset the session. You can either log off, then log back on, or simply reboot the computer.