Items Missing From Desktop

Apart from the Macintosh HD Icon my wife's desktop is blank however it used to be full of photos, folders and alias's. Not long ago when doing something (she cannot remember what) all of a sudden everything disappeared from the desktop.

However when you open finder and click on Desktop in the RH pane the Desktop folder is full, as well as a Burn Folder, a folder and several photos there are hundreds of ZERO KB TIFFs and JPEGs. I have checked a couple of the ZERO KB JPEGs and have found the originals in iPhoto.

Questions:

1. What is messed up to prevent these items (less the ZERO KB files) appearing on the Desktop?

2. What do I need to do to retrieve everything apart from the ZERO KB files?

To get rid of the ZERO KB files I can deleted them (i tried and it worked) but I am not sure if I have the originals without checking every one??

The non ZERO KB files can be opened and moved, its just the fact that in finder they are in the Desktop folder but they are not visible on the Desktop itself.

Thanks

I have opened Disk Utility and ran both Verify Disk Permissions and Repair Disk Permission but the problem still exists??

Many thanks

 

I have solved part of the problem, it would appear that all of the non ZERO KB files / folders had been dragged outside of the visible screen area!!! I have retrieved them by clicking on the lower part of the screen and selecting the area outside of the visible screen and dragging the selected area back into the visible area of the screen and hey presto there they were.

I still have the problem of why the ZERO KB files came from and why and how can I easily confirm that they are spurious ZERO data copies of files that I already have.

Thanks