How to remove shortcut arrows from Vista desktop icons

Posted on October 26, 2007 at 8:17 am

I’ve been using Vista on my laptop for about a month now and I noticed from day one that the shortcut arrows on my desktop icons are HUGE! I really used to hate the shortcut arrows in Windows XP, but at least they were small and inconspicuous. If you’ve been using Vista, however, you’ll have probably noticed that the icons are much larger and so are the arrows!

Well, that’s where Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover comes in handy. This little freeware application is by no means a stunning piece of software with loads of features, etc, but then again it’s usually the simple applications that everyone loves.

The program is very simple to use and does it’s one job very well. You can either shrink the arrow size for the arrow shortcuts or remove them altogether from your icons. Choose one of the three options from the list and click Apply.

Now go ahead and log off your computer and log back on. Your arrows should either be gone or be reduced in size. I tried to run this program on Windows XP, but it didn’t allow me to.

If you want to remove the shortcut arrows from Windows XP desktop icons, you’ll need to check out my post on tweaking Windows XP using Tweak UI for XP. You can also tweak many other settings using the Tweak UI program.

[tags]windows vista, shortcut arrows, desktop icons, icons, remove shortcut arrows[/tags]

» Filed Under Windows Vista

Comments

8 Responses to “How to remove shortcut arrows from Vista desktop icons”

ReviewSaurus said on : October 26th, 2007 at 9:01 am

Indeed Tweak UI is one of my fav. software as it gives you sooooo many options which you just can’t do without it. They all can be done by changing the registry entries but for new users….tweak UI is a better thing.

As far as this small utility goes…I think it should be doing the nice job….as you’ve recommended!

Madhur Kapoor said on : October 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

Thanks buddy . I have been looking for something like this.

valeria said on : July 20th, 2008 at 2:04 am

i was using this program, but if u uninstall it after making the change. everything goes back to before.

here’s a way to do it by editing the registry
http://skattertech.com/2008/07.....tcut-icon/
only took me like a minute to do it.

Efraim said on : October 12th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Comeon guys, girls!!

The best way is to edit the REGISTRY!!!

1. Click “Start”
2. Click “RUN”
3. enter “regedit”
4. Under “Edit” option click “FIND”
5. Find What: line enter “Lnkfile”
6. under LOOK AT: line make sure you check “KEYS” only
7. click “Find Next”

8. delte, remove “IsShortcut”

and restart your computer…..

generic human male said on : January 1st, 2009 at 8:35 pm

You don’t have to reboot or log out for the changes to take effect. Just kill the process explorer.exe (in the task manager) and then restart it.

12foot said on : January 28th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

This reg edit prevents u from opening games in the games folder, and creates other problems…..don’t do it…

calebstein said on : November 28th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

The best way is by redirecting the arrow overlay to a blank icon.

1. Open regedit.exe and go to HKey_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ and create a new key called “Shell Icons” (no quotes).
2. Create a blank icon named noarrow.ico and move it to your %systemroot% directory (usually C:\Windows\).
3. Create a new REG_SZ in the “Shell Icons” key named “29″ (no quotes) with a value of “%systemroot%\\noarrow.ico” (no quotes) (the two backslashes is not a typo).
4. Either log off or restart explorer.exe for the arrows to be removed.