Shortcuts located in "D:\Program Data\..." not working even though they're pointing to the right targets (Windows 7)

Posted by Kevin on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Kevin
Published on 2012-04-09T04:06:39Z Indexed on 2012/04/09 5:34 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 173

Filed under:
|

I just made a fresh install of my windows 7 home premium using my laptop's recovery disks (HP Pavilion dv6-2151cl) using minimal settings. After install, I set up "Program Data" and "Users" to my D partition to save space changing the folders in the registry. Then I updated windows (including W7 SP1), and installed all other programs.

After installing all other programs I noticed that the icons of all new programs (not included in the windows install) in "All Programs" had a blank sheet as icon and they don't do anything. Looked into "D:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" in the windows explorer and the same is true there. All the shortcuts in C: and "D:\Users..." work both in the "Windows Explorer" and "All Programs".

Also I noticed that the shortcuts do display the right icons inside the "open" dialog boxes. And if I copy the shortcuts in "D:\Program Data..." to the desktop they also work as expected.

I checked file association for .lnk and it was OK, but also tried the registry fixers for this file association and they had no effect. There are no missing programs that I can tell in the "All Programs" menu, the just don't do anything if they lay in "D:\Program Data...".

Any thoughts on how to make Windows 7 treat shortcuts in "D:\Program Data..." as they should?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about windows-7

Related posts about shortcuts