Can restore 33 applications, Microsoft released scripts to restore Defender updates and mistakenly deleted application shortcuts

CTOnews.com January 16 news, Microsoft recently said in the update log that it is unable to restore Defender update misdeleted application shortcuts, but today officially released the advanced search query language (AHQ) and a PowerShell script to find and recover some mistakenly deleted application shortcuts.

"Microsoft has identified the steps that customers can take to recreate the start menu link for an important subset of the deleted affected applications," Microsoft explained in the support documentation. These actions have been integrated into the following PowerShell script to help enterprise administrators take recovery action in their environment.

If affected, you can use the PowerShell script shared on GitHub, which will scan the HKLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ App Paths\ registry keys to see if 33 different programs are installed on your computer.

CTOnews.com comes with a list of application shortcuts that can be found and restored:

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Photoshop 2023

Adobe Illustrator 2023

Adobe Creative Cloud

Firefox Private Browsing

Firefox

Google Chrome

Microsoft Edge

Notepad++

Parallels Client

Remote Desktop

TeamViewer

Royal TS6

Elgato StreamDeck

Visual Studio 2022

Visual Studio Code

Camtasia Studio

Camtasia Recorder

Jabra Direct

7-Zip File Manager

Access

Excel

OneDrive

OneNote

Outlook

PowerPoint

Project

Publisher

Visio

Word

PowerShell 7 (x64)

SQL Server Management Studio

Azure Data Studio

Related readings:

"Microsoft launched an investigation into the disappearance of start menu and taskbar shortcuts on enterprise Win10 devices."

"Win11 was also affected, with Microsoft saying it could not restore Defender updates to mistakenly deleted start menu / taskbar shortcuts."