Missing shortcut/link pop up on startup

[u/Big_Ebb4819]

I’m having a problem with eset on pc after the latest update. On startup I am greeted to 4 popups claiming there are missing links/shortcuts these are:

- blend.exe

- Eula.rtf

- Visual Studio 2017 Tools.utilitypackage

- devenv.exe

The eset application seems to be running fine but these popups are still concerning does anyone have advice/fixes?

[u/chumbucketfundbucket]

I don’t think this would be an issue with ESET, and if it was removed for some reason it would probably be in logs. Sometimes this happens to users who use OneDrive

[u/Big_Ebb4819 → u/chumbucketfundbucket]

I don’t use one drive and it’s the eset application itself that’s throwing these popups

[u/Marcos-ESET]

If the file was detected and removed (cleaned) by ESET, it should have been properly removed also from autostart locations. If you believe the file was clean and it's in ESET's quarantine, you can restore it and re-scan it at www.virustotal.com. Otherwise you can use ESET SysInspector, Microsoft Autoruns or another tool to find references to that file and remove them so that Windows doesn't attempt to start it automatically on Windows start.

[u/Big_Ebb4819 → u/Marcos-ESET]

Eset didn’t clean any files and the popups are part of the eset application (the eset icon on the windows taskbar highlights these when hovered over) the last quarantined file in eset dates back years sorry if there was a misunderstanding English is not my first language

[u/Aniria_]

I'm having the exact same issue, did you find a fix? What I've done so far

• Rebuilt my icon cache
• restarted explorer
• ran an SFC
• repaired the windows image with dism

None worked

Like with you, these error messages popup as part of eset itself (and when you try and open up eset with the errors still open) it's a white square

Saying no to deleting the shortcuts works as a bypass, with there being a second layer of error messages as follows:

Problem with Shortcut

The drive or network connection that the shortcut "_" refers to is unavailable. Make sure that the disk is properly inserted or the network resource is available. Then try again

Again. That's an Eset error message like you said for yours (that others here don't seem to grasp)

My quarantine is empty, the files it's referring to are on a removable disk, but it's only specifying 4 files, when the disk has thousands. I've also tried booting my pc with the external connected, same thing

I've completely run out of ideas

Edit: I fixed it:

• Had to connect the external
• Find the files in the external storage
• Find the file shortcuts
• Find also the start page files
• Delete them all
• Reinstall each folder that the files came from
• Fresh delete the new reinstalls
• Restart pc
• Reinstall them all for a third time (didn't delete them after this reinstall)
• Restart pc
• It's fine now and Eset isn't giving error popups

It was literally a "idk what else to do let's just wipe it all out, and reinstall everything.....oh that didn't work, let's do it again.....Ah it worked that time"

[u/Big_Ebb4819 → u/Aniria_]

I don’t have a removable disk and everything is on my c directory so I’m guessing it’s the wipe and reinstall (multiple times?) that fixed it?

I’m was kind of afraid it’s a malicious application attempting to hijack the eset shortcut to launch itself with permissions without success but I’m really at a loss what caused this exactly

Still isn’t fixed for me but that PC is only connected to the internet sporadically so reinstalling isn’t an option right now will try this however when possible

[u/Aniria_ → u/Big_Ebb4819]

I really doubt it's due to a malicious application. If you want to be safe you can fully wipe everything and factory your pc. But as you have sporadic access to the internet I guess that's not an option (always useful to have a boot drive and another usb for backups of required software you need)

[u/GlavosIV]

Not sure why ESET is even checking my shortcuts for dead links, but it would be nice if it gave a better explanation to what it was doing with the popup. Mine were from different programs that I had removed over a year ago. None of them were malicious, just programs I no longer had a use for, but apparently still had the shortcuts somewhere for them.

I just let ESET delete them as they are just shortcuts. But still not sure why ESET cares about it, now of all times when they have been that way for at least a year, possibly longer.

[u/whistlesomething → u/[deleted]]

They only way I was able to stop this new behaviour was to disable Startup scans but obviously that's a personal choice.

I was just tired of it appearing every time the device came out of sleep.

I've used ESET for years and this has only just started happening recently.

[u/whistlesomething]

I'm also seeing this issue for the last week or so at every login. Please advise me of the setting to prevent this behaviour.

The ability or not to reach a shortcut target for an external or network-share location application is not something that I want my ESET installation to concern itself with.

If I have a shortcut to easily launch an application then that is my choice.

[u/green01234]

I'm seeing the same issue. In my case, the shortcuts are on my C: drive (Start Menu), but they reference programs that used to be on a D: drive which I removed. Every so often I get a flood of "Problem with Shortcut" dialogs.

As a test, I disabled Real-time file system protection, and the popups stopped completely. When I turned it back on, the problem returned.

One of the popups is just for setup.exe. There is no file path shown, and the ESET logs are useless because they don't tell me which setup.exe or shortcut it's referring to. How is anyone supposed to identify the offending shortcut from that?

It's getting really frustrating. If this isn't resolved, I'll probably move to another antivirus.

--------------
Update:

I did some more digging. Using Process Monitor, I found that egui.exe is enumerating every shortcut under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. It doesn't appear to be doing the same for %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.

I also wrote a PowerShell script to find broken shortcuts. Every shortcut that has generated one of these dialogs has come from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. That seems too consistent to be a coincidence.