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Is it okay to delete .lnk files?

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by rick h

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When running Norton Utilities windoctor, one of the things it scans is links. We use autocad and some machines will end up with hundreds of lnk's. Is it safe to search for lnk's and delete them all?

5 replies

by kesl

A Windows .lnk file is a shortcut pointer that points to (usually) an executable that is somewhere on your hard drive. When you delete programs sometimes these .lnk files are not deleted because they are not part of the original install. So the uninstall does not 'know' about them. You are safe to delete these with Norton Utilities. They simply delete the shortcut, not the file executable itself. If you know that the file still exists, you can choose to not delete the .lnk, then click on the shortcut which will not 'find' the executable. However, it will give you the option of searching for the executable and when found re-link with it. This is good if you have moved some files. Still if you just use Norton Utilities to delete the link the executable will still work and you can always create a new shortcut.

by skitzizzy

We had a similar problem with .lnk file scanning using McAfee VirusScan. The Start Menu would freeze on users opening it while the software scanned .lnk files.

We added *.lnk (all link files) to the exclusion list for McAfee, since the file is only a pointer to an executable, it's not so much of an issue doing that.

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