Over the years I’ve experienced that Autodesk’s Desktop Connector can at times be a little finicky after updating. With the release of the new version 13.x things seem to be no different.

The most common issue I’ve experienced when updating desktop connector is for the BIM360 icon to disappear from Windows Explorer.

So if this happens, how do we get the icon back? Here are a few things you can try from least destructive to most destructive.

Refresh Your Drives

First, try to refresh your drives. This only refreshes your Autodesk related “drives” and will not affect anything on your local machine or your network.

Right click on the Desktop Connector icon and select Refresh Drives from the menu.

It works some of the time, but not that often. Not a problem though as there are more things to try.

Log out and in again

As simple as it sounds, this is always the first thing you should try. It’s quick and easy and will sometimes get the job done.

Right click on the Desktop Connector icon in the task bar and select Sign Out from the menu. Once Signed out, sign back in. Simple.

Delete Your Desktop Connector Cache

Ok, so now we’re getting.. sort of.. serious. Deleting things!

First, log out of Desktop Connector and close it.

Next, head to the following folder:

%localappdata%\Autodesk

Or if you want to browse manually, this will be C:\Users\<your user name>\Local\Autodesk and look for a folder that looks like the one highlighted below

Delete this folder. Alternatively if you’re a bit worried about the results of deleting the folder, rename it so that it’s suffixed with .old

Our next step is to head to the folder

%localappdata%\Autodesk\Web Services

Delete the Desktop Connector folder under Web Services.

Do not delete the Desktop Connector folder from the folder in the previous step!

Restart Desktop Connector by launching it from the start menu. You will see the “Welcome to Desktop Connector” dialogue.

Close the window and wait for a few more seconds and your BIM360 icon should reappear!

Reinstalling Desktop Connector

On the very rare occasion, even after following these steps you still won’t see the BIM360 icon, you’re going to have to reinstall desktop connector.

The correct way to reinstall is to follow the steps above to clear out the Desktop Connector cache.

Once the cache has been cleared, uninstall desktop connector and restart your computer.

Once the computer has been restarted you can then reinstall Desktop Connector and everything should work once more.

What if I still can’t see it?

In my experience the above steps should be all you need to take. If you’re still not able to see the icon there is one step left that might fix it..