Microsoft announced that it is investigating a Windows issue that causes application shortcuts in the Start menu or taskbar to disappear. Recently, multiple IT administrators announced that they were experiencing the issue and sought a solution.App shortcuts disappearing issue in Windows
The disappearing Windows Start menu and taskbar icons seem to be caused by a recent Microsoft Defender update, as it turns out from the discussions that experts started on Twitter and Reddit. The issue appears to affect businesses that use Microsoft 365 and Defender for protection against malware, viruses, and other threats.
Microsoft believes that its attack surface reduction rules (ASR) to prevent malware infection are triggering this issue. Microsoft states that they are currently investigating the issue and are rolling back the rule so that no more people are affected. However, there is still no workaround on how to recover shortcuts on affected systems.
By the way, according to the reports, not only Microsoft applications, but also all other applications’ shortcuts are affected by the problem. Therefore, it is tried to run these applications with impractical methods (such as Start > Run).
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