If you right click on your My Computer (or whatever you've re-named it) icon, clicking the Properties item in the context menu should open the System Properties panel, with all sorts of goodies in it, including access to the Device Manager, controls for the size and location of your Page File, System Restore settings, and many others.

For many users, though, right clicking the My Computer icon and choosing Poperties brings up a panel called My Computer Properties, and the panel looks just like the properties panel for a shortcut.

If that happens to you, your My Computer icon IS a shortcut icon, and your REAL My Computer icon has somehow been removed from your desktop.

You can access the System Properties panel without going through the My Computer icon. You can get to it through the Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel, System) or by pressing the Windows key and hitting the Pause key up at the top of your keyboard, for instance, but . . .

Since the REAL My Computer icon is a really handy gateway to a lot of powerful stuff, you'll want to get it back on your desktop and get rid of that shortcut icon that's masquerading as the My Computer icon. Here's how:

Right click somewhere empty on your desktop (not on an icon; not on the taskbar; not on the Start button; ...) and choose Properties from the context menu that appears. The Display Properties panel will come up. Click the Desktop tab of the Display Properties panel, and click the Customize Desktop button near the bottom of the Desktop panel. On the General panel that appears, just under Desktop icons, check the box next to My Computer.

While you're there, UN-check the box beside Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days. That may be the culprit that wiped your real My Computer icon in the first place. Now click OK, and OK again to get out of there.

You'll see a new My Computer icon on your desktop now, and you can delete the old shortcut icon that was playing an identity theft game with you. When you right click the new (REAL) My Computer icon and choose Properties from the context menu, the System properties panel will open, and all of the goodies will be there.

If the new My Computer icon fails to show up when you exit the Display Properties panel, just reboot to give it a kick-start.