The Redmond giant has confirmed a problem with Microsoft Defender that caused this anti-malware solution, known for offering quite good results, to remove the shortcuts created to access applications on the taskbar and start menu.
It is not a serious bug, at least not in the strict sense of the word, but it is clear that it is annoying, and that in the end It’s a waste of time, since it is necessary to recreate those shortcuts. This issue occurred just yesterday, and was identified by many system administrators after updating Microsoft Defender definitions to the latest available version.
From what Neowin tells us, it is clear that the problem was caused by the smart security update 1.381.2140.0. This caused Microsoft Defender to remove all shortcut files (.lnk) located within the “ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs” path.
The bug was confirmed in Windows 10 operating systems, and some cases were also reported in Windows 11. System administrators tried to fix it, but in the end, Microsoft got their act together and soon corrected it. I can confirm that at the time of writing this article the Redmond giant has shared a solution on his official blog, and also has acknowledged that this bug affects all versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The solution goes through “switch ASR rules to audit mode”according to the Redmond giant, something that can be done in two ways:
- Using Intune: enabling the rules to reduce the surface exposed to attacks. | Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
- Using Group Policy: enabling attack surface reduction rules | Defender for Endpoint – Group Policy.
Microsoft has also confirmed that cannot recover deleted shortcutsso system administrators will have no choice but to spend time recreating them.
