Apparently Microsoft has pulled down the necessary hotfix to disable automatic scheduled maintenance shortcut deletion (eg: if you have multiple unused or “broken” desktop shortcuts) from KB2642357. This has affected me in an environment where a number of users link to applications, folders or files on network drives.
I republish the x64 version of the hotfix so you can use it where necessary, then set the “IsUnusedDesktopIconsTSEnabled” and “IsBrokenShortcutsTSEnabled ” DWORDs to 0x0 in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ScheduledDiagnostics Registry key and avoid this spurious behaviour that I’d once written off as user error.
Windows6.1-KB2642357-x64.msu (enclosed in ZIP file)