Windows

Quickly Find Broken Shortcuts On Your PC

Written by Kevin

Bad Shortcut Killer is a utility developed to find and remove broken shortcuts from your Windows desktop and start menu.

This next app I am about to discuss isn’t for everyone especially users who just bought a new computer or just recently reformatted. But those of you who refuse to reformat (myself included) and have had the same hard drive for quite some time you might enjoy Broken Shortcut Killer. This program does exactly as its name states, kills broken shortcuts! Over months or years of using your computer you create shortcuts on your desktop and within your start menu, well at times you uninstall programs or move folders to new locations, thus breaking the shortcut you initially created.

In most cases, it’s easy to locate a broken shortcut but for those who don’t want to take the time to navigate through a large desktop or start menu can load up Broken Shortcut Killer, hit run and be done with it!

Once you have installed the small app, simply open it up and click on ‘Find Bad Shortcuts’. This will locate all of your bad shortcuts, you can then check the ones you wish to remove or click on ‘Check All’ and hit the ‘Delete Selected Shortcuts’ button to remove them.

Broken Shortcut Killer is free to use and runs on Windows XP/Vista/7. Get it here.

About the author

Kevin

Kevin is the Founder and Senior Editor of Tech Heavy. When he isn't writing about the latest tech tools he spends his days working in an IT department in Dubuque, IA. @kevincray

9 Comments

  • This worked perfectly for me. Found 4 broken shortcuts…it’s probably been over two years since I reformatted or really cleaned up my computer.

  • Does it affects PC performance if we have a broken shortcut on it?

  • Tried this and found 3 broken shortcuts on my PC. Thanks a lot. It is useful. Does bad shortcuts appear frequently on our PC? How frequent should we check for it?

  • My Computer icon on my desktop was broken earlier, I wonder what was the problem.

  • Tried this, I found no broken shortcuts. Maybe ‘coz it is still new.

  • Broken shortcuts can be part of those pieces clogging one’s PC and it is necessary that we have to do some cleaning from to time. Though there is no confirmed data that broken shortcuts can directly affect PC performance, still nothing beats a clean PC.

    However, I prefer not to use this app since my Smart Care has this feature already included in its menu.

    Great share, still.

  • This is one way of making a computer clean and helping it perform at its peak performance. As I consider my PC as one of my partners in online business, I am always open to different ideas on how to take care of it and prolong its lifespan and use…thanks to this another good idea, Kev.