Desktop Icons Not Appearing

I have almost the same problem, though I don't have to restart to get the icons to appear. I just have to click somewhere on the blank desktop and they show up...

Would like to have this fixed as well...

Well, my HD icon has not shown its face since installed the last upgrade of 10.5 right before Snow Leopard. I notice that when I go into Google Images they do not appear immediately, none of the "thumbnail" images appear at all or only a few. Suddenly they will pop in. This happens with also with the thumbnail images of movies on Netflix. Very strange. I was initially having problem sending emails but with 10.6.1 that was remedied but now I am having a bit of a problem again. More and more becoming disenchanted with Snow Leopard.

In my case, I have just discovered the problem.

I was using a program called Change Desktop that was set to launch at login. It is a program that allows you to customize when and what picture appears on the desktop. Anyway, turned it off and things are now fine. I have contacted the developer and hopefully he will have a fix for it.

Hi, I created ten albums in iPhoto and labeled them Desktop, Whacky stuff, Dogs, NASA, Military, etc. I can switch between them and pick the display time in System Preferences ... "Desktop"

same here, i dont know if its due to latest update or a key command i did by mistake and activated a "invisibility" action to it, but i dont see icons no more on my desktop (no files, no dvd drive, no screen captures) NOTHING! ...and im sure that files are there, because Finder says so! Weird and frustrating since i use desktop a lot - help please!

There seems to be a bug with Finder where some aspect of disconnecting a MBP from an external display will cause the desktop to crash. Symptoms include:

All desktop icons disappear but files on the desktop can still be accessed by browsing through Finder.

Desktop background image cycling (if enabled) does not occur.

You can bring up the desktop shortcut menu (i.e. by right clicking)

I've noticed people complaining of similar problems in the following forum topics:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10733288&#10733288
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10414480&#10414480
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10524664&#10524664
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10407191&#10407191

The workaround is to relaunch Finder using the "Force Quit" application, at which point the desktop works normally again. However I'd really like a proper fix to this bug. If anyone's heard about one, please post about it here.

Bump. I have this problem as well. Disconnecting from my cinema display leaves the MBP13 inch with the wrong resolution. ForceQuiting finder fixes the problem but is a pain. Would like to see some resolution to this issue.