recently I noticed many of the links in Start menu > All Programs were missing, including all MS Office shortcuts. seems that some folders are still there, but no shortcuts in them, some folders gone altogether. one interesting thing is that Accessories, Games, Maintenance seems to be fully intact as well as some other seemingly random ones also, when installing new programs, none of the shortcuts are showing up, though one new folder did w/ no shortcuts in it I have no idea what happened. is this a Registry problem or what?
you may be right, I did end up w/ some fake AV a while ago after being careless clicking a link. I removed it but maybe this start menu problem is a leftover issue from that. probably some problem w/ the registry that the fake AV screwed up and AV/anti-Malware did not fix
I don't think it's a problem w/ the HDD because for example I just installed MBAM and it did not put any shortcuts into my start menu but I checked the box for Desktop shortcut and it worked, I also copied the Desktop shortcut to the Programs folder and it worked fine C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu also there are no other symptoms of problems w/ the HDD