Registry Insights: Program Shortcuts in the Registry

Program Shortcuts are files on your windows PC that, when launched, open another application or program elsewhere on your PC. Each shortcut is marked with the location of the other program and any parameters that the shortcut wants to run with the application.

These paths and parameters of each shortcut are recorded in your Windows Registry. When the location of a shortcut becomes invalid, this information remains stored in your Registry, as there’s nothing to tell the registry that the shortcut no longer points to anything.

Registry Reviver goes in and cleans up all program shortcuts (references) to files that no longer exist. Note that it won’t delete the shortcuts themselves; you’ll still need to move them to the trash when you spot irrelevant ones.