Post · Kakapo Social

Just fyi @JenMsft just got reminded of a funny quirk in windows explorer:

When you create a shortcut to e.g. your homedrive on the desktop. Then at next login you do so without network connectivity (e.g. windows doesn't automatically connect it) followed by clicking on that shortcut it causes two things:
1) Windows will automatically connect the homedrive now.
2) Windows claims the link is invalid as the homedrive does not exist (despite it just now auto reconnecting it).

Klaus Frank

@agowa338@chaos.social · 6 days ago

@JenMsft

[for context only]
Got reminded about this as I use it to work around issues of a customer having decided to hide the "wifi connection" dialog on the login screen but demanding that you connect to their VPN before logg-in to windows.

(And for some reason also having broken the auto-reconnect of the wifi, probably a GPO thing even though it surfaced after the last round of updates...)

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kkarhan@infosec.space · 6 days ago

@agowa338 @JenMsft #2 is extra annoying and propably wasted MILLIONS of #TechSupport #PersonnelHours because on #Unix-esque systems that shit doesn't really happen, but on #Windows this is a known wrongness since at least #WindowsNT 3.51…

Klaus Frank

@agowa338@chaos.social · 6 days ago

@kkarhan @JenMsft

How does this waste tech support hours that it shows this "do you want to delete this shortcut?" question?
(The more annoying one is when you've filled your desktop with such shortcuts and it runs that dump "invalid shortcut cleanup" powershell script that deletes all of them without asking once it exceeds a hardcoded threshold)

Or do you mean the issue of the home drive not connecting when logging in without network connectivity?

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kkarhan@infosec.space · 6 days ago

@agowa338 @JenMsft the problem is that it's not just misleading, but #TechIlliterates WILL CLICK THAT OPTION and then complain at #TechSupport that they can't find said shortcut anymore!

Klaus Frank

@agowa338@chaos.social · 6 days ago

@kkarhan @JenMsft

That dialog isn't misleading. If you click "yes", it will actually delete the shortcut.

That dialog does what it says it does. However I just think it is funny that windows does both instead of just picking one.

Like if it didn't autoconnect the Homedrive fine, I can see how a shortcut to "H:\" is being considered as invalid and why it asks to delete it.

Same for it auto connecting it once you click on it as it apparently knows the network path internally and is able to

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@kkarhan@infosec.space · 6 days ago

@agowa338 @JenMsft the problem is that this shortcut should not be delete-able to begin with!

Or at least not spit out such a misleading error when reconnecting.
- If I want to delete a shortcut, it should just offer me that option like with files as an explicit action.
- If it's not yet connected it should attempt connecting in the background and only complain if it can't!

It's just absurd that #Microsoft refuses to unfuck this mess…

~3 more replies (not shown)

Klaus Frank

@agowa338@chaos.social · 6 days ago

@kkarhan @JenMsft

I think you're barking up the wrong tree. This dialog is fine. It mainly informs the user that the shortcut is broken.

In this case it probably is a race condition between windows trying to "fix it" (the service that finds moved files and fixes shortcuts to them was added later after all) and it telling you it is broken

The automatic cleanup which deletes ALL shortcuts to network files (as it runs before the system has network) is more of an annoyance once it gets triggered