The problem is, whenever there's a network issue, or the admin resets Samba, or anything like that, I get "Delayed write failed" messages, which are normal because we have Offline files turned off, but then, all my desktop icons are out of order, even after a restart.
Define “out of order”. I’m guessing you mean that they are actually in alphabetical order, which is the default behavior.
AFAIK the desktop icon order is stored in some desktop.ini AFAIK the desktop icon order is stored in some desktop.ini, but even with all the folder view options set to Show rather than Hide, there's no desktop.ini in H:\Desktop.
That’s because desktop.ini does not contain the icon layout, that is stored in the registry at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop.
I'm a WinXP user on a Windows domain with a Samba fileserver. I have an H: drive mapped for my home files and there's some group policy that makes H:\Desktop be my desktop.
The problem is that Explorer stores the icons layouts in the registry, but your registry is not getting written to the server, so when you log back in, you are getting the default layout. Your files are irrelevant in this situation.
Where does this file live, so I can make a backup of it? It takes forever to put all my icons back the way I like them, so a minor network glitch becomes a major annoyance.
What you can do (aside from using folders to organize your desktop icons) is to use a desktop-layout program to save and restore your desktop icon layout. Just be sure to pick one that stores its configuration data as a file instead of in the registry, otherwise your back to square-one.