Scott B., from Greenville, Ohio, wrote in regarding an issue with Windows 7 nuking his desktop shortcuts. More specifically, the System Maintenance (troubleshooting platform-powered) task was firing up and deleting “broken shortcuts” as he had exceeded the 4 broken shortcuts limit. (The deletion of anything automatically is a disaster waiting to happen.) In Scott’s case, Windows had detected his disconnected network location shortcuts as “broken” and wiped them out due to the lack of detailed shortcut metadata returned from WMI’s Win32_ShortcutFile class. Whoops.
While I would personally dispense of the dangerous task, Scott was focused on upping the hard-coded limit – from 4 to something higher. This is pretty easy to do. Simply navigate to %windir%\Diagnostics\Scheduled\Maintenance and open the TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 file for editing. Search for the substring “-gt 4” and change the 4 to… something else as desired. Save, close all open windows, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Have a Windows 7 quirk that’s driving you nuts? Feel free to email me (bottom of aforelinked page).
Valve rolled out a new Steam UI beta recently. Any shortcuts it created, though they were valid, were being deleted by this task as broken. Hooray. Valve fixed it a week or so ago.
I believe they are .url shortcuts pointing to the steam:// protocol. Not sure what the change they made was, possibly they tweaked the url format or something.
Not sure why they’re going with .url shortcuts now, no icons. Ugh.
Err there are icons my bad. I just happened to test with a game that did not have one.
that’s a bunch of bs, as far as i’m concerned. the os should not be deleting anything without informing the user. i had a client email me today and asked why all of his desktop shortcuts were deleted.
anyway to turn off the disl cleanup part of the diagnostics without disabling the entire task?
forget it, i remembered where i turned it off on my system, when i installed win 7.
I have a bit different problem with Windows 7.It is great otherwise but one big issue that angers me is that for some reason Windows 7 decides to delete all my thumbnails without even asking me.Just without warning…boom..all gone.
Happens about twice a week.Initially i was sure it was my fault but seems im not the only one: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/9878f7db-57ff-409e-ac04-d7d678d2b629
There is a fix in the linked thread but seems even this does not prevent the deletion.
So basically when i see that thumbnails have vanished i navigate to the folder where i have my thumbnails stored in SFX archive.Extract it and fire up Total Commander.Kill explorer from Task Manager and replace thumbnail cache.Do relogon and im good…until next time that is.
Addendum to Rafael’s post:
This problem can happen to shortcuts that’re pointing to a shell folder or Games (Explorer). See this article, especially the comment by Daniel Martin:
Which Files Does the Windows 7 System Maintenance Troubleshooter Delete? – The Winhelponline Blog:
http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/which-files-does-w7-system-maintenance-delete/
Nice feature IMO, but Microsoft should really change the target from the desktop and to the start menu. I’ve had to go though my whole start menu manually multiple times this last year since that’s a part many uninstallers seems to forget nowadays.
I have a better fix for the issue. You need to edit the script so that it always returns nothing to delete but this gets rid of the issue once and for all.
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/03/30/fix-windows-7-desktop-shortcuts-disappearing/
no Martin, your fix is not the best fix. Just change 4 to 99999 ( or something else absurd ). In this case, the easiest fix is the best.
i enjoy your blog, but you should be willing to recognize when someone comes up with a better and easier method.
Eh, easier maybe, “better” is subject to individual opinion. Yours is better for you, his for him.
I do agree that sometimes it’s OK to take the quick & dirty route if it’s easier.
This post isn’t about resolving the core issue, but rather answering a reader’s question on how to up the broken shortcut count. I answered his question.
Sort of applicable: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/23/558887.aspx
Though in this case his real problem was clear enough I suppose. :)
Behind the scenes, I did speak with the reader. He did not want to disable the functionality (or raise the count to 9999). He legitimately wanted to raise the count just a tad, so it kept doing its job if his desktop was overrun with broken shortcuts.
the problem i mentioned regaring my client was, they are NOT broken links. they are shortcuts that do get used. when the last time they were used, i don’t know, but they did function. that’s a problem.
i had the issue during the beta, and i can guarantee my desktop shortcuts were not broken. finally fixed it by just disabling the maintenance. i could care less about running that on a scheduled basis.
I can’t even create new shortcuts on my desktop?
Does this has something to do with it?
Cheers
Any fix for Windows Media Player 12 eating 100% CPU while hanging at collecting media in its library where older versions worked just fine?
http://www.videolan.org
fix is simple . roll back to previous version of media player.Guy’s i have some windows tips here:DigitDiary
Now from the Windows 7 system information tray to open the Show hidden program can see the little MSN icon, and then you want to let has been displayed in the tray Department is very easy. Open the Windows 7 operating system in the notification area icon management window, MSN is set to display icons and confirmation of completion MSN really reproduce the small icon appears in the original location of the.
MSN small icon on the settings, I think the other application is using the same method can be displayed in the system tray, but because I did not demand the other commonly used procedures, so do not go try here, if you want Some of the other applications on the systems tray icon, may wish to consider this approach can not guarantee that we can do but Xiaobian Oh Oh!
I’ve changed the value of the file, but i can’t replace it?
I’m the owner of the file but it’s impossible to replace it in any case…
What should i do?
Re Windows 7 starter I’ve got an odd problem.
I installed Open Office for kids (on kid’s netbook) and it works fine.
The problem is this;
This kid is writing a story so to simplify things I put a shortcut on the desktop to the story (in ‘my documents’)
Clicking on this does nothing. Clicking on the story in ‘my documents’ fires up OO writer just fine.
So I thought ‘ok, I’ll put a shortcut to OO writer with the story to load on the desk top.
Once again nothing. What is W$7 doing to block it?
I experimented and found any non M$ programs has only 50/50 chance of working with manually installed shortcuts.
Any ideas?