Did you try right clicking on your desktop and choosing "arrange icons with" and then choosing "show desktop icons"
Unused icons are programs on your desktop that you have not opened for a while. Windows notifies you that you haven't used them in a while and will want to create a folder and put them all in for you to clear clutter.
Right click on Desktop, Click on Arrange ICON by, Then click on Show Desktop icons, CLOSE. By MURALI RAO(NAGPUR)
Icons can be dragged with the mouse. If you have so many icons on your desktop that there is no room for them all without overlapping, you should review them to see if you really need that many.
Desktop
The area with the screen saver and all of those little icons is the desktop.
You may have accidentally hit the 'Ctrl' and 'A' keys at the same time. Try clicking once on the desktop away from the icons - that might "unhighlight" them.
Right Click Your Desktop Select View Untick Show Desktop Icons
If there is no space on the desktop for icons, the icons will run off the screen. Thus the icons will not be displayed. If you use up the space, you could delete icons you don't use, resize the icons, increase the screen resolution, or create a folder on the desktop to move your less commonly used icons to.
in my opinion the icons are stored on the desktop
Any icon on the desktop will stay on the desktop when you restart your computer. Upon windows shutdown, Windows saves all of your settings and preferences. So when you restart all of the icons, documents, pictures and everything else will stay right were it was.
Don't know if you are talking about any specific application but to view desktop icons, right click on desktop go to 'view' and select/check (if unchecked) 'show desktop icons'.