Shortcuts and folders away from the desktop?

My friend recently installed a game, maybe played it for half an hour and when he came back to the desktop all of his shortcuts and folders were gone, including "This PC" and the trash I first led him to the desktop page where normally everything should be what was the case. When we brought all of it back to the desktop, he noticed that some things like the trash and the Minecraft Launcher were missing. To show me that, he streamed over Discord and everything that was lost was there. Then I googled a bit, but found nothing further…

And is there a way that I can access his PC remotely? I heard something like that, but I don't know how, I just need it for convenience, because he doesn't even know how to create a folder and doesn't know what a desktop is xd

Use team viewer.

Thank you very much, just have to hope that who has a solution to the main question ^^

He probably hid the desktop icons. See: Right-click on Dekstop Background → View → Show Desktop Icons

Does that help?

I'm sorry I forgot to mention that we had already tried it and it didn't work: /

Which would be?