ADDITIONAL SYSTEM INFORMATION :
Only happens on Java 8 Update 191, doesn't seem to apply to earlier versions (tested 8u151 and 8u181, the later was deployed on 300 machines before the last update)

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
One of our customers was experiencing odd issues when using a java web applet. Somehow, when the applet did load, some of their users got messages about unavailable files or programs both local and remote - further investigation led to the messages indicating that a shortcut (.lnk file) without valid target - i.e. the file the shortcut was pointing to was either unreachable or no longer existed - was the very reason for that.
Sysinternals Process Monitor revealed that jp2launcher, upon starting, tried to open all .lnk files on both the current user context's desktop folder (C:\Users\%Username%\Desktop\) and the public desktop (C:\Users\Public\Desktop\), though I do not know what it's actually doing to the shortcuts' targets. It doesn't actually launch any of the target executables, though.

Out of all places, the allmighty search engines yielded one result. A reddit thread where people describe web applets from different sources causing the same behaviour:
https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/9qzgmo/really_weird_java_jre_8u191192_webstart_issue/

REGRESSION : Last worked in version 8u181

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
Install or update to JRE8u191 32bit (didn't test 64bit)
Create a .lnk file on either C:\Users\%Username%\Desktop\ or C:\Users\Public\Desktop\
Delete the .lnk file's target
Start web applet

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
 jp2launcher.exe tries to touch .lnk files on both User's and Public Desktops
ACTUAL -
See expected result.

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I'm no developper, we just deploy Java Runtime to our customer's devices, so I do not know which components inside the web applet code may be causing the issue. I only had one web applet from our customer's intranet where I do not know any of the code.
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CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
Downgrade to Java8U181 or earlier or
Have all users manually delete all links to (even temporarily) unavailable targets

FREQUENCY : always