Apologies - forgot to clarify: working on Windows XP professional SP3, on a Dell machine, dual monitor (extended desktop across the monitors) using an ATI graphics card.

I am not sure if anyone else has experienced this but despite my best efforts, the icons that i have hidden/deleted from one desktop will reappear when my computer returns from an idle state.

To be more specific - I have 4 desktops, 3 of which should only have a handful of icons on them.
The fourth has about 40.

While working on one of the desktops that has few icons on it, I will step our for a while (so the computer goes to its lock screen) return, and suddenly all of my icons (the summation of all icons distributed in desktops 1-4) appear on my desktop.

Thoughts?