Terry Pinnell wrote:

After last night's WU to 1803 build 17134.648 several of my startup
programs are not loading.

I ran Nirsoft's AutoRuns and these missing programs were now showing
with .lnk file entries, instead of .exe like most of the hundreds of
other entries.

Also: while in AutoRuns I saved the .arn file as a precaution and
deleted a few entries which seemed identical duplicates. After a PC
restart the missing progs were still missing. I re-loaded my .arn file.
On then looking in my Startup folders, which probably had around ten
entries, to my dismay I found they were all missing.

I'm about to search for backups of
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
and
C:\Users\terry\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\S tart Menu
but meanwhile any insights please?

Terry, UK

The .lnk files are, well, files which normally are referred to as
shortcuts. The entries in your Start menu are .lnk files: shortcuts to
where are the real programs.

In the startup entries for programs that are now .lnk files, look at
where is the .lnk file. Then, in Windows Explorer, go to that folder
where is the .lnk file, or to where the startup entry pointed. If there
is no .lnk file there, that's your problem: there is no shortcut there
to find to load the program it would be pointing to. If there is a .lnk
file there, double-click on it to see if the shortcut works. If the
shortcut does not work, edit the shortcut to see to where it points for
the program it is supposed to load.