Just fyi @JenMsft just got reminded of a funny quirk in windows explorer:
When you create a shortcut to e.g. your homedrive on the desktop. Then at next login you do so without network connectivity (e.g. windows doesn't automatically connect it) followed by clicking on that shortcut it causes two things:
1) Windows will automatically connect the homedrive now.
2) Windows claims the link is invalid as the homedrive does not exist and asks to delete it (despite it just now auto reconnecting it).
[for context only]
Got reminded about this as I use it to work around issues caused by a customer having decided to hide the "wifi connection" dialog on the login screen but demanding that you connect to their VPN before logg-in to windows.
(And for some reason also having broken the auto-reconnect of the wifi, probably a GPO thing even though it surfaced after the last round of updates...)
Just fyi @[email protected] just got reminded of a funny quirk in windows explorer: When you create a shortcut to e.g. your homedrive on the desktop. Then at next login you do so without network connectivity (e.g. windows doesn't automatically connect it) followed by clicking on that shortcut it causes two things: 1) Windows will automatically connect the homedrive now. 2) Windows claims the link is invalid as the homedrive does not exist and asks to delete it (despite it just now auto reconnecting it).
How does this waste tech support hours that it shows this "do you want to delete this shortcut?" question?
(The more annoying one is when you've filled your desktop with such shortcuts and it runs that dump "invalid shortcut cleanup" powershell script that deletes all of them WITHOUT asking for confirmation once they exceed a hardcoded threshold)
Or do you mean the issue of the home drive not connecting when logging in without network connectivity?
That dialog isn't misleading. If you click "yes", it will actually delete the shortcut.
That dialog does what it says it does. However I just think it is funny that windows does both instead of just picking one.
Like if it didn't autoconnect the Homedrive fine, I can see how a shortcut to "H:\" is being considered as invalid and why it asks to delete it.
Same for it auto connecting it once you click on it as it apparently knows the network path internally and is able to
@agowa338 @JenMsft the problem is that this shortcut should not be delete-able to begin with!
It's just absurd that #Microsoft refuses to unfuck this mess…
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. This dialog is fine. It mainly informs the user that the shortcut is broken.
In this case it probably is a race condition between windows trying to "fix it" (the service that finds moved files and fixes shortcuts to them was added later after all) and it telling you it is broken
The automatic cleanup which deletes ALL shortcuts to network files (as it runs before the system has network) is more of an annoyance once it gets triggered
Well apparently Microsoft even published a Hotfix for it. Don't know why they never integrated it into any version of windows though.
Back then when I still worked as Sysadmin I just patched that script in our golden image by hand to remove that section that deletes the desktop shortcuts to keep all other cleanup functionalities it does working.
Fixes an issue in which broken shortcuts are deleted from the desktop on a computer that is running Windows 7. This issue occurs if you run the System Maintenance troubleshooter on the computer. Additionally, you receive an offer to delete unused desktop icons.
Klaus Frank
Kevin Karhan 