Good day everyone.
I recently discovered that the Apps folder I created in All Programs area of my start menu has lost all of its programs. The programs are physically still on the drive in Program Files (86) but can not be launched from the start menu now. I have always tried to organize the Programs menu so it's not out of control, and have never had something like this happen. I see instances in the forums where the entire Start menu might vanish, but can't figure out how or why just the listings in this one folder would go away.
The only thing I can think of is I do regularly use R-Wipe and Clean to removed junk that doesn't need to be on the computer, but again, I've used it for years and never had this problem.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

The Start Menu's user location is

C:\Users\usernamexxxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\ for the specific user.

While the general Start Menu used by most installers and accessed by all the users is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.

See what is in your Apps Folder and see if you can access it correctly.

The easiest way to access these two locations is to right click on the All Programs link from the start menu and click on Open, or Open All Users, for each location respectively.

ProgramData is a hidden folder, so you may need to set the Folder view (Control Panel/ Folder Options) to show hidden files and folders if you want to navigate to either location.

If your user cannot create, or read, a file in either of those locations look at the Security Tab and the access permissions.

dont wipe anything on your desktop again - move em somewhere else first - i lost all folder contents from wiping the desktop once too