Solved Do you want to rename "Firefox.lnk(2)" to "Firefox.lnk(3)"

I have a number of items pinned to the taskbar.
It would appear that some of these are duplicates of some invisible items which I cannot track down.
Displaying the properties of these items shows the item name followed by (2).
Any attempt to change the name back to the original gets: Do you want to rename "Firefox.lnk(2)" to "Firefox.lnk(3)".
Not a train smash, just puzzling and annoying.

Sounds like they are just duplicates, just unpin them.

Shortcut for taskbar is stored in:
C:\Users\(User)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
You can navigate to this folder and delete it if invisible on the taskbar

topgundcp said:

Shortcut for taskbar is stored in:
C:\Users\(User)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
You can navigate to this folder and delete it if invisible on the taskbar

Click to expand...

Thanks, I just located it and cleaned it up.
But I'm at a loss as to why or how the duplicates occured.

The registry entry for the task bar is stored under Favorites binary key in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband

Somehow this value got messed up.

topgundcp said:

The registry entry for the task bar is stored under Favorites binary key in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband

Somehow this value got messed up.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

Can I assume that deleting and recreating the affected entries will have sorted the values or is there further action required?

If you delete the Favorites and restart Explorer using command: tskill explorer, it actually clear all the entries in your taskbar and when you pin a shortcut to taskbar it will re-create it.

topgundcp said:

If you delete the Favorites and restart Explorer using command: tskill explorer, it actually clear all the entries in your taskbar and when you pin a shortcut to taskbar it will re-create it.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll bear that in mind.
Seems to be OK now, but with Windows one never knows.