Microsoft recalled Friday the 13th as Defender deletes shortcuts on Windows 10.

Although Microsoft Defender is generally a good anti-malware solution, the program can often affect innocuous objects, leading to very poor false positive scores in third-party evaluation programs.

Earlier today, one such incident occurred when IT and system admins started reporting that after updating the Defender definition, they could no longer access shortcuts to apps in the taskbar and Start menu. can do Apparently the issue was caused by a Security Intelligence update. Version 1.381.2140.0As Defender will delete all shortcut (.lnk) files located inside ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.

Users say the issue is occurring on Windows 10, although it’s possible that Windows 11 is also affected. System admins were working around the issue by configuring the Attack Surface Reduction Rule (ASR) rule “92e97fa1-2edf-4476-bdd6-9dd0b4dddc7b” to audit only (via Reddit).

A few hours ago, Microsoft 365 Status’ official Twitter handle confirmed the issue and said it was looking into the issue:

An hour later, Microsoft updated its status to say that it had identified the issue and reverted the policy:

However, IT admins are still apparently a bit angry that they will now need to restore deleted shortcuts.

Thanks for the tip majortom1981!