There are solely two ‘Friday the 13th’s in 2023, and the primary has already seen Microsoft scrambling to repair a difficulty that affected customers’ Begin menus and taskbars following a botched replace to its Defender antivirus.

Following the mishap, Microsoft took to the Web to verify (opens in new tab) that many customers had skilled “a sequence of false constructive detections” for the “Block Win32 API calls from Workplace macro” Assault Floor Discount (ASR) rule, resulting in many program shortcuts (.lnk information) vanishing.

Among the many initially instructed fixes from the corporate was to show the “Block Win32 API calls from Workplace macro” rule into audit mode, nevertheless Microsoft has now issued a extra complete repair that, after deploying, will enable customers to show the ASR rule again into block mode.

Microsoft Defender downside

The corporate has instructed customers to improve to safety intelligence construct 1.381.2164.zero or later. An extract from the assistance web page reads:

“Microsoft has confirmed steps that clients can take to recreate begin menu hyperlinks for a major sub-set of the affected functions that had been deleted.”

The steps have been supplied as a PowerShell script on a GitHub web page (opens in new tab) – a developer platform that Microsoft owns. There’s additionally a set of directions for deploying the script utilizing Intune, which many customers had been vocal about when it got here to discussing the blunder on platforms like Reddit (opens in new tab) and Microsoft’s personal Tech Group web page (opens in new tab).

One person requested Microsoft “why Defender didn’t document the lnk file deletions”.

As the issue continues to be an ongoing supply of disruption amongst Microsoft customers, it’s unclear whether or not the repair has been sufficient for the tech big to revive a few of its misplaced religion. General, person experiences stay a blended bag, with some claiming profitable restores, and others reporting errors.

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