How to delete all dead/broken shortcuts on windows 7

Question

Is there a method or tool that can delete all dead/broken shortcuts on a Windows 7 64bit system?

Solution 1

While wysiwyg already answered with a pretty good general cleaner tool that may do this as well, I think the real answer might be a spesific tool that does this. Here are two such:

Fix Shortcuts from Puran Software is a free utility that can help you find and fix or delete broken shortcuts on your computer http://www.puransoftware.com/Fix-Shortcuts.html

Broken Shortcut Fixer scans your Windows computer for broken shortcuts and automatically repairs any shortcuts that it can find using the Windows link resolve method http://www.brokenshortcutfixer.com/

Solution 2

I believe CCleaner has this feature.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

You can download a portable version here if you wish: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds

CCleaner is a small, effective utility for computers running Microsoft Windows that cleans out the 'junk' that accumulates over time: temporary files, broken shortcuts, and other problems.

Comments

[bobasti]

I'm developing a Java program called MyShell in which I'm adding commands every now and then, and for this particular case I've implemented a command clean shortcuts <path> that cleans all dead/broken shortcuts or symbolic links. You can get the jar file at github.com/dinomario10/MyShell under Releases.

[KeyC0de]

Yes it does. But only for Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts.