Hard drive and folders disappered from desktop

Having one of those days. Was working fine.  I had been working on a file in InDesign CS6. As I was saving, I noticed that the hard drive and folders had disappeared. I restarted. No luck. Have run disk utiity and restarted. So far nothing. I can still access hard drive and files, but would like them back on desktop. How can I fix that? I do have an external back up - just in case. Running - OSX 10.9.5. Help?!

Do a backup.
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J.  When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder.  Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and com.apple.desktop.plist.  Move the .plists to your desktop.
Re-launch Finder by restarting the computer and test. If it works okay, delete the plists from the desktop.
If the same, return the .plists to where you got it  from, overwriting the newer one.
Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this. 

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