Disable shortcut search/deletion

The computers on the factory floor are connected through wireless. Sometimes they lose connection and when someone clicks on a shortcut mapped to a network drive it displays something along the lines of "item not found xxx" with the options to search or delete.

Now is there anyway to disable this and just have the shortcut do nothing when it has no connectivity to the network? Darn employees sometimes hit delete or search and then it maps that shortcut to the wrong file.

I was wondering if setting up a group policy for file permissions only allowing read access but don't know if this would quite do it. Any suggestions? Thanks.