On Friday afternoon, Microsoft said it has fully developed a fix for a problem in Windows that causes app shortcuts in the Start menu or taskbar to disappear.
Many admins analyzed it Twitter problem and Reddit this morning and Microsoft confirmed that it is related to a recent update to Microsoft Defender threat detection.
The issue affects businesses and organizations that use Microsoft 365 and Defender to protect against malware, viruses, and other threats. In a note to customers, Microsoft said it has received reports that a specific rule reduction surfaceς επίθεσης (ASR από το attack surface reduction) causes the problems.
Earlier in the day, IT administrators attempted to resolve the issue by setting the rule “Block Win32 API calls from Office macro”.
Microsoft said that "we have enabled the rule to prevent further problems while we investigate the issue."
However, the update took several hours to develop before Microsoft announced it at 4:46 p.m. ET.
The fix has completed its deployment, which will prevent additional impact from occurring. We're also continuing our investigation into the issue, and further details can be found under MO497128 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Microsoft 365 Status (@ MSFT365Status) January 13, 2023
The bad news, now, is that the fix doesn't restore deleted shortcuts as described in the details of the issue from Microsoft:
Next steps: This issue is resolved in security update 1.381.2164.0. Installing the updated build 1.381.2164.0 or later should prevent the problem, but it will not restore the deleted shortcuts. You will need to recreate or restore these shortcuts through other methods.
