Windows 10: Why do my Start Menu Shortcuts keep disappearing?

Hi.Approximately on average every 3 months, my Start menu shortcuts all disappear and are replaced with a "Productivity" set of shortcuts.This is the fifth time since early last year. It's REALLY getting on my nerves.See also https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/start-menu-shortcuts-gone-again/8e2e936a-7906-4077-9b35-f5395849fc93It happened again yesterday.- How is it happening?- How can I recover my shortcuts? It takes me about an hour to manually put things back.- What can be done to permanently fix it?- In the interim, can I somehow backup my Start Menu shortcuts so I can

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How to pin shortcut to start menu.

At first, you can create a shortcut in your Programs folder
(in a hidden folder C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs). The shortcut appears in
All apps list. Then you can pin it to Start menu / Taskbar as Mayank Gupta10 suggested.

The common way is to create a shortcut on the Desktop.
But the more elegant way is creating Custom toolbars.

 

Shortcuts' icons disappear in Start Menu

No, shortcuts I put in a folder within the Start Menu folder, in File Explorer.

In C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.





Shiness- The Lightning Kingdom, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, to name a few, don't have icons. They show up fine in the actual Start Menu, just not in File Explorer.

 

Desktop shortcuts disappearing

One of the computers i maintain has a few of the desktop shortcuts disappearing now and then. It runs windows 7, and has a shitload of shortcuts on the desktop.

Any idea what might cause this?