The Obscure Location of Quick Launch

I use Launchy and so have no need for program launch icons, be it on the Desktop or Quick Launch or Windows Start. I don’t even use the Quick Launch toolbar and all I knew until recently was that you add a quick launch icon by dragging any program (or a shortcut pointing to that program) into the toolbar.\\r\\n\\r\\nToday, when I accidentally deleted one of the quick launch icons of a machine not belonging to me, I found the obscure location of the quick launch icons:\\r\\n

%APPDATA%\\\\Microsoft\\\\Internet Explorer\\\\Quick Launch

\\r\\n\\r\\n(APPDATA is an environment variable which can be found by typing echo %APPDATA% at the command prompt.)\\r\\n\\r\\nI checked it on Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, but it is possible that this location is preserved across OSs. I can’t fathom the reason behind placing quick launch icons in the APPDATA folder belonging to the Internet Explorer. Some might consider it harmless, but say when a custom slipstream installation of Windows is made where the Internet Explorer is not installed, it is possible that Quick Launch is also gone. The location is senseless and a bug, whatever maybe its priority. It is just a tiny example of bad software.\\r\\n\\r\\nWhile there are tools that can help you clean your quick launch cache, etc., if you are not a complete newbie the best way would be to navigate to the Quick Launch folder and see the various files present in that folder (mostly .LNK or shortcut files). You could see for yourself if the files are wrongly pointing to any dead or moved links and update them if necessary. You can also add your own shortcuts directly using Right Click –> New –> Shortcut.