Call it the case of the missing shortcut. Although I discovered the issue because of App-V, the culprit really turns out to be the OS itself.
As some of you know I am busy working on a new App-V tool. As part of the testing, I built a number of test applications (or pulled out oldies-but-goodies that I already had) to take the tool through it’s paces. The tool is an external App-V package editor and I need to verify that it locates issues and fixes the packages without breaking them. One test package had a set of seven shortcuts. But only 6 showed up when I deployed the edited package.
At first, I though I found a bug in my new tool. After all, that is why I am testing. But after investigation I determined that it wasn’t my toll that was the problem. After verifying the xml in the package by hand, I looked closer at the deployment by the App-V client to determine if it was seeing all seven. Sure enough, App-V could be seen laying down all seven lnk files, but only six appeared in the start menu. So maybe this was an App-V bug and not in my new tool?
All seven shortcuts were being placed under the same folder. I should note that I was testing on Windows 10 (1709). I searched online to see if anyone knew of a limit, but came up blank. Testing on Windows 7 showed that indeed this appears to be an undocumented limit in Windows 10. And nothing to do with App-V or my new tool.
To work around it, you’ll need to either trim down the number of shortcuts or use multiple folders. Now you know and you won’t waste a sunny Saturday afternoon because of it.
